"Amusing amateur sleuth"

Scientist Jason Blue specializes in how to clean toxins from the environment while his wife Carolyn is a gourmet chef. Carolyn receives an advance to write a cookbook on New Orleans cuisine. They travel to New York because Hodge, Bruce & Byerson want to hire Jason to help them with their "Cleaning the Environment Through Chemistry" mission while Carolyn meets with her editor.

Upon their arrival in the Big Apple, they learn that someone murdered the person who recruited Jason. Without informing one another, Jason and Carolyn independently investigate the homicide. Though approaching the puzzle differently, each of them draws the same conclusions about the perpetrators.

This reviewer provides two tips before reading this complex mystery. First fill up with a big meal before starting because the descriptions of food are salivating and torturous. Second ignore why two amateurs would investigate a killing especially since they are at best remotely impacted. Nancy Fairbanks writes a delicious, often amusing amateur sleuth story that will satiate the sub-genre's gourmands.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 3, 2001