Spenser and Angelotti’s is the sort of place you go for the best coffee in Chicago, or for the selection of 104 different cheeses. And now it’s the place, as Dr. Sam Davidian, freelance reporter Cat Marsala’s favorite trauma surgeon, realizes, where the soup bones, at least on the right day, are human. Miraculously, the mayor and public health department agree to a noncomittal recall of contaminated meat that will contain the scandal while they look for clues to a murder and while Bruno Angelotti hires Cat to go undercover as a catering consultant to discreetly question the staff. Even after the police establish the identity of the donor—it’s Serge Gretzka, the catering manager who won’t be answering the phone in his Florida vacation retreat—there’s precious little evidence against his missing wife Sophie or her alleged lover, head baker Nicholas Lane. Instead, D—Amato serves up a series of harassing but non-lethal attacks on Cat (her windshield is smashed, she’s shot at and dosed with ipecac) alternating with picketing by concerned vegetarians and mouthwatering catered meals at a Lake Shore apartment and a funeral parlor. D’Amato, on holiday from the intensity of Hard Bargain (1997), ebulliently folds all these incongruous ingredients together with a clever solution to whip up the driest and wittiest food mystery of the season. A final bonus is a pair of recipes for butter cookies and osso buco—just in case you’re still in the mood.
Pub Date: May 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-83354-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.
In Archie Goodwin's 15th adventure since the death of his creator, Rex Stout, his gossipy Aunt Edna Wainwright lures him from 34th Street to his carefully unnamed hometown in Ohio to investigate the death of a well-hated bank president.
Tom Blankenship, the local police chief, thinks there’s no case since Logan Mulgrew shot himself. But Archie’s mother, Marjorie Goodwin, and Aunt Edna know lots of people with reason to have killed him. Mulgrew drove rival banker Charles Purcell out of business, forcing Purcell to get work as an auto mechanic, and foreclosed on dairy farmer Harold Mapes’ spread. Lester Newman is convinced that Mulgrew murdered his ailing wife, Lester’s sister, so that he could romance her nurse, Carrie Yeager. And Donna Newman, Lester’s granddaughter, might have had an eye on her great-uncle’s substantial estate. Nor is Archie limited to mulling over his relatives’ gossip, for Trumpet reporter Verna Kay Padgett, whose apartment window was shot out the night her column raised questions about the alleged suicide, is perfectly willing to publish a floridly actionable summary of the leading suspects that delights her editor, shocks Archie, and infuriates everyone else. The one person missing is Archie’s boss, Nero Wolfe (Death of an Art Collector, 2019, etc.), and fans will breathe a sigh of relief when he appears at Marjorie’s door, debriefs Archie, notices a telltale clue, prepares dinner for everyone, sleeps on his discovery, and arranges a meeting of all parties in Marjorie’s living room in which he names the killer.
The parts with Nero Wolfe, the only character Goldsborough brings to life, are almost worth waiting for.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5988-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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