Reviewer
Lavanya Karthik: Lavanya is from Mumbai, India and is a licensed
architect and consultant in environmental management. She lives in
Mumbai with her husband and six-year old daughter. She loves reading
and enjoys a diverse range of authors across genres.
Author: Julie Hyzy
Berkley Prime Crime
ISBN: 978-0-425-24583-5
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)