Follow Here To Purchase Affairs of Steak (A White House Chef Mystery)

Author: Julie Hyzy

Berkley Prime Crime

ISBN: 978-0-425-24583-5

Hot  on the heels of the successful ‘Buffalo West Wing’,  writer Julie Hyzy  serves up another winner – a new White House Chef Mystery . First Chef  Ollie Paras is back in Affairs of Steak, doing what she does best – cooking up a storm (or several) in the White House kitchens, with a dollop of good ol’ crime fighting on the side.   “Why is it always you?” asks more than one character in Julie Hyzy’s latest culinary caper. For where Ollie Paras goes, intrigue invariably follows and her duties as Executive Chef to the First family seem to put her square in the middle of a mystery with startling regularity.

This time around, Ollie stumbles upon the corpses of two of her colleagues when out surveying sites for a formal event. The two victims are part of the White House staff. It doesn’t help that she makes her grisly discovery in the company of Peter Everett Sargeant, White House sensitivity director, a man who seems to go out of his way to make things difficult for Ollie.  It doesn’t help either that they just might have seen the killer leave the scene, for soon the squabbling pair find their lives upturned, their houses broken into and their lives in peril as it slowly becomes apparent that the murders are part of a far bigger, and more sinister plot.  Add to this the usual White House drama – opportunistic colleagues gunning for their jobs, struggling relatives hoping for a hand up, former boyfriends, potential new romances – and you have a typical day in Ollie’s eventful life.

As always, Hyzy writes with warmth, wit and an eye for detail.  Like the previous books in this series, Affairs of Steak gets together a motley crew of engaging characters that Hyzy juggles with skill. As a woman holding her own in a chauvinistic, and intensely political environment, Ollie is a great hero. She is graceful under pressure, quick witted when faced with danger, a natural at detective work, and a gifted cook.  Also generous – appended to this book is a collection of recipes for some of the delicacies she dishes up through the course of the book. 

Julie Hyzy is the national bestselling author of the White House Chef Mysteries and the Manor House Mysteries. She won the Barry and Anthony Awards for Best Paperback Original for State of the Onion in 2009, and several other awards for her novels and short stories. Her first Manor House Mystery, Grace Under Pressure, earned a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly.


Follow Here To Purchase Affairs of Steak (A White House Chef Mystery)