Although food writer and dilettante chef Angie Amalfi is ready to start thinking about cutting a wedding cake with her delectable homicide detective boyfriend Paavo Smith, Paavo's got other things on his mind—mainly, the grisly murder of two San Francisco women. While he combs the city for clues to the brutal slayings, Angie begins a quest of her own: searching for a little gem of a restaurant for a magazine review. She discovers three grumpy old men who make a mean marinara, but seem to know nothing about how to run a business. At least not a culinary business. As Angie deals with the diamond-in-the-rough eatery and her sisters' unwelcome wedding advice, Paavo's inquiry points to Angie as next on the killer's hit list. The ever-game Ms. Amalfi takes off her oven mitts to join the investigation. But Angie's leaping head first into the stewpot for sure—because a murderer with a vendetta is more than willing to give one nosy chef her lethal just desserts.
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Special for Buy cheapest saleCustomer Review : Secrets In Spaghetti; Caffe Latee w/Foamed Milk a la Dawn. The Egg & WHO? : Cooking Most Deadly: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (Angie Amalfi Mysteries)
Lots of t'ings to t'ink about in this novel. Love, love, love the geriatric cons and their accented dialogue.
Pence's Angie books have shoved out of my keyboard words like "favorite"; "most"; and "best." Each time I read another of her novels everything is so superb and supreme, I feel like I'm burping the trite & cliche because I run out of superlatives. This time, I'm forced to toss any effort to spout super syntax in my raving. COOKING MOST DEADLY has literally gone too far out on several limbs with an enormous variety of high quality reading appeals, especially to my entertainment escape needs, my raison d'etre (reason for being) within the pages of a novel.
When I picked up this novel (# 4 in the series), I had already read and reviewed IF COOKS COULD KILL (# 10), so I knew that Angie would develop a friendship with the geriatric ex-cons, and I had already vicariously dined in their restaurant, Wings of an Angel. Instead of this prior plot knowledge spoiling my read of CMD, it enhanced the panache. I was overwhelmingly curious to see exactly how the relationship between Angie and these three grumpy old guys would go from Angie being an unwelcome first "customer" in a "restaurant" which was not, and which had no name and no menu, almost no cook. The plot, as it worked the expansion of the restaurant (from "open" to open), as it developed the relationships centering around the cafe, kidnaped my involvment better than any other evolving situation in this series.
I suppose I have a weakness for any type of failure being regenerated into the warmest, coziest type of success, especially for people and their places which have long been stuck in the upset underbelly of the opposite of utopia.
The slapstick scenes in the café were some of the funniest I've read, anywhere. Pence does food slips & slithers in the best of taste and the worst of pomposity (pomposity dissolves or dies in Angie's spirited presence). I laughed out loud too often reading this book, usually with gleeful gusto, though a couple times with restrained spits. During one of the exuberant explosions, I was laid back in my easy chair next to the sofa on which my coal miner husband was sleeping his last hour prior to leaving for his night shift. Reading CMD, I was unexpectedly caught by a case of the giggles and couldn't escape the need (unsuccessfully restraining puff-like sneezes and huffing hiccups), and was forced to quickly and "quietly" vacate the living room, clutching book to mouth, to find another reading location which would allow at least a muffled type of regularly renewed giggling gags.
I'm looking at the sunrise of 59 years old this month, and, yes, I still have hysterical giggling fits, but not often.
If you recall, I mentioned a variety of high quality appeals to reading entertainment in this book. The funny scenes were balanced amazingly adeptly with the dark realism of the mind and machinations of a serial killer. Since Pence had been developing her talent for blending dark with light through her first 3 novels, this being the 4th, I suppose she had enough practice to really step out and strut in this one. She did.
Maybe the comedy needed to be higher and (satisfyingly) sillier, to lift the lower, darker mood of the mystery in this plot. Whatever. The bounce from spotlight to lowlife was intense, yet so seamless I went from wide-eyed rivet accompanied by slow, stealthy breathing, to bursting out in hysterics, from the drop of one scene to the next.
Pence is amazingly adept with the development of the dregs of psychotic personalities (the killer in this one), as well as the zapping to life the most endearing of funny guys (the ex-con, geriatric trilogy, pseudo restraunt owners).
With all this, we have a secret ingredient, TOO? Yep.
Loved the fact that Angie was looking for a very special restraunt to review which would outdo all the others, and instead of finding something extra-ordinally regaled with Ritz, gourmet-ed with glory, she finds a hole-in-the-wall with nothing but a strangely (but really very good) seasoned spaghetti on a non-menu of one item, forced out reluctantly by an ex-prison cook who hadn't actually intended to serve anything except an under-cover heist with his over-the-hill and out-of-the-big-house buddies.
With all this, we also have a new character introduced as an unlikely friend, sidekick for Angie? Yep. Here we have the spaghetti queen, Connie, stepping into her first Angie scene, and we get to see Connie caterpillar go from mouse to moose (however you spell that chocolate thingy which females fancier than I put in their hair). Here we again have that skillful use of comedic contrast, allowing us to deal with Connie's sister having become the first realistically and graphically displayed murder victim in the plot.
Okay, with all this going on, what the heck's Paavo doing? Oh, he and Yosh are madly rushing against a heavy political agenda to catch the real killer before he kills again and again, and before the government big wigs sledge-hammer the whole mess into a rush job crash, every-which-way, with flattened heads rolling, innocence or guilt, who cares, as long as the nose is bent beyond getting into anything politically sacred (in its closet corruption).
Is Angie busy enough trying to find the perfect restaurant to review for her article for Haute Cuisine? Nooooo. She's also busy "getting to know" the serial killer, up close and personal. This strange "relationship" development is realistic, chilling, and captivating. Only Angie's character could believably bring out this unusual insight into this type of killer's mind and personality. Women like Angie with her type of innocent spirit do exist. I used to be very much like her. Believe it. I could tell you true stories too much like this.
As a United Airlines stewardess (they're now called flight attendants) in 1968, based in Newark, NJ, I was once walking the corridors of the Port of Authority, in uniform, heading home in the evening, exhausted with my head lost in the ozone, from an advertising gig at a car dealership, when a uniformed policeman stopped me with a genuinely caring warning. "Please be more alert and cautious," he explained and continued, "a woman was stabbed to death, just last night, in near the same public spot in which you are now walking." That was several years prior to my being employed by the Multnomah County Sherrif's Office in Oregon, as a public speaker for rape prevention, in a job for which I read many case studies and reports of person-to-person crimes and their perpetrators. This personal background is provided to give credence to my strange history and personality, which in some ways parallels Angie's spirited desire to believe in the best in everyone, wanting to ignore those bells warning that someone's not quite right, very much less than good. Sadly in some ways, luckily in others, I'm much older now.
This is the book in the series dedicated to Joanne's husband David, so you might guess it had to be good. And, guess what? These two actually love each other, still, after more than a quarter century of sharing a home and family! It's obvious that Pence pulled out all the stops and wrote her heart out, into a grand success of a story.
I predict the day will come that Pence receives a special literary award for her ability to use comic relief with such natural abandon, with the result reading in such successfully flowing grace. Don't ask me how she accomplishes the mystery and drama within this high comedy, without losing an ounce of intensity, complexity, or serious, riveting potency.
This type of talent is worthy of a Pulitzer, in addition to the genre awards the author has received.
This is the type of dedicated, truly multifaceted, richly-talented author who will have her books redone in jazzier and jazzier covers, and who will progress from having a series of mass market paperbacks grow into a stock split into hardbacks released of all her books in this series, after she's already knuckled under to giving her all to 13 paperback originals, producing winners time after time, after time.
Is 13 the magic-number turning point? (Red Hot Murder out February 2006, see my Listmania)
Or will it be the 14th in the series, now in the rich ovens of the ambiance of Italy.
If I have anything to write about it, Pence will get the "Sixpence" she's due. The significance in her books has not quite been seen yet (through a glass brightly) for what it is, possibly because her offerings are so subtly, seamlessly complex they can easily be seen as *** just*** light, fluffy mysteries. They are that, and so much more.
And the secret ingredient is ...
Who doesn't love one version of this ingredient, and hate the other, both with capital letters required. Even with that clue, I wouldn't have guessed it. This food item may be a closet craving for even the most snobbish of gourmands (including me).
Great job, Lady! Your husband should be so proud, a peacock wouldn't have enough eyes in his tail to expose the broadband.
Linda G. Shelnutt
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