About the Author:
Janet Laurence had her first three books published in the same year 1989. One of them was a guide to good food in Somerset, another a cookery book, THE LITTLE BOOK OF FRENCH COOKERY, which she has seen all over the world, and the third was the first in her culinary crime series featuring Darina Lisle, cordon bleu cook. ‘I wanted to write a series of crime books; a cook can go anywhere and meet anyone, including corpses,’ she says. ‘And food was something I knew about.’ At the time she was the cookery correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and ran courses from her Somerset home. Since then she has published sixteen crime novels: ten in the Darina Lisle Series, each featuring a different aspect of the food world; three in the mid-eighteenth century Canaletto series, and two in her new historical series, set in the first years of the twentieth century and featuring an the American Ursula Grandison working together with an ex-Metropolitan detective, Thomas Jackman: A DEADLY INHERITANCE, and A FATAL FREEDOM. She is currently working on the third. There is also a stand-alone suspense novel, TO KILL THE PAST. She is one of the contributors to THE SINKING ADMIRAL, a collaborative crime novel by fourteen members of The Detection Club published in 2016, and is the author of WRITING CRIME FICTION – Making Crime Pay. She has also published three contemporary women’s fiction under a pseudonym, Julia Lisle, and has ghost written a series of romantic novels. She is the author of a number of cookery books, most recently NORWEGIAN FOOD AND COOKERY, and THE CRAFT OF FOOD AND COOKERY WRITING. Janet has presented papers on crime writing to a number of International Conferences, Symposia and Seminars. She has served as chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association and is a member of The Detection Club. She was included in The Times ‘100 Masters of Crime’ and has been a Writer in Residence and Visiting Fellow at Jane Franklin College at the University of Tasmania. She runs a number of crime writing courses and also produces editorial assessments for unpublished scripts. She is currently Chair of the Judging Panel for the CWA International Dagger and a member of the Society of Authors’ Management Committee. Janet lives in Somerset and enjoys being part of a village community. When she’s not writing, she plays bridge, is a keen cinema-goer and also member of a local book club.
From Publishers Weekly:
Jealousy and malice in the food world lead to murder in this promising English debut. Darina Lisle, a rising young cook and caterer, takes a large step forward in her career when she is hired by the Society of Historical Gastronomes to prepare the authentic feasts for their annual weekend. The commission is not without its hazards, including the unwelcome attentions of her cousin Digby Cary, a prominent food writer and critic; the presence of a television crew covering the society's meeting and the food preparation; and one member's dog, who bites a restaurateur and devours an elaborate tart planned for breakfast. On the morning of the second day, Digby is discovered dead, killed with a kitchen knife, and Darina, as heir, is chief suspect--although many society members had reason to hate him. When food author Deborah Makepeace, convinced Digby had plagiarized her work in his new book, dies of an overdose of sleeping pills, the evidence again points to Darina. Laurence introduces a truly engaging heroine and deftly balances the seriousness of murder with lighthearted mockery of the egotists who inhabit all professions.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.