Red Beans and Vice (Heaven Lee Culinary Mysteries) - Softcover

Temple, Lou Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312982895 ISBN 13: 9780312982898

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2002

Synopsis

Heaven Lee has come to the Big Easy to get some much-needed vacation time away from her bustling Kansas City restaurant and cook up some dishes worthy of her name for the Sisters of the Holy Trinity's annual benefit diner. But when the Sister's prized crucifix goes missing and a local coffee importer turns us dead, stabbed with Heaven's knife, not only does the famous chef find herself in hot water with the local police, but someone seems to be stalking her as well. Now, embroiled in a mystery as hot as New Orleans' Cajun cooking, heaven must prove her innocence, catch a killer, and whip up some recipes that will save the Sisters from financial ruin before she becomes the main course in a murder trial, or worse yet, ends up as fish food at the bottom of the Mississippi River..

About this title

About the Author

Lou Jane Temple is an adventurer. She has taken on the food world, cooking and catering, being a restaurateur, writing about food and wine, and authoring six culinary mysteries featuring Heaven Lee. She has also bee a guest chef at the Culinary Institute of America and at the famed James Beard Foundation. Lou Jane lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

From Publishers Weekly

In her sixth mystery featuring Kansas City chef Heaven Lee, Temple (The Cornbread Killer, etc.) serves up fare more short-order than gourmet. Heaven agrees to help an old friend, the wife of coffee importer Truely Whitten, in New Orleans with a benefit for the Sisters of the Holy Trinity, but receipt of an anonymous letter accusing her staff of infecting the food almost puts this plan on the back burner. Heaven travels to New Orleans to confer with other committee members before what promises to be a major fund-raiser. Then news anchor Amelia Hart arrives uninvited to sour the proceedings, while the theft of an 18th-century crucifix and the appearance of graffiti on the sisters' convent walls provoke further consternation. This is too much of a coincidence for Heaven, who voices her suspicions before leaving this pot of trouble to simmer and heading home to hate mail and pastry shells. The week of the benefit, she's back in the French Quarter, plating salads and overseeing the dessert course. When an explosion rocks the neighborhood and the dust clears, Truely is discovered dead in a tub of dishwater. Heaven must find the culprit before she becomes the chef's special. A complex story line that fails to hold together, undeveloped characters, events that contribute nothing to the story the ingredients of this mystery never set properly. Even the descriptions of restaurant specials fail to appetize. (Aug. 20)Forecast: Food mystery fans will want to send this one back to the kitchen and there will be no run on this plat du jour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312982895
• ISBN 13: 9780312982898
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288