Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge

 

Hello everyone. I hope you're having a wonderful week.

I love having a whole roasted chicken in the fridge, it's so homey and I feel like I can make a million different meals from that one ingredient.  Yes, I know I mention chicken roasting ad nauseam here, but believe it or not I can cook other things.  I can trim a whole beef tenderloin, clean and sectioned, in under 15 minutes.  I can make stuffed, braided bread, chocolate pot de creme, ice creams, seafood, ratatouille, or biscuits that will make you cry out in joy. Surprisingly, I don't have that many cookbooks, preferring books that teach not just feature recipes.  Of course, many people, including me, have the classics like The Joy of Cooking or the ever-famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child.  I have my mother's copy of Julia Child's famous book, even in 1970 it was in its 19th printing, it's still going strong today.  Pretty amazing for a book not to be relegated to a backlist, all these years later. Of course, me cooking anything out of this book likely looks like Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory, while standing on banana peels and being pelted with eggs, but I imagine I'm a world class chef. The hot, boob-a-licious kind of chef with dazzling smile and great hair, not the grumbling old man with dirty towel tucked under his apron.

I recently read Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge.  The first thing that you'll notice in this mystery is the cover, which looks very much like Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking only with a chef's knife plunged through the middle with blood running down it.  An amusing start without even opening the book.  This is the story of Tabitha Knight and her pal, Julia Child in 1949 Paris.  The book opens the day after a party held at Julia and husband Paul's apartment.  Tabitha and Julia are food shopping.  Julia has undertaken the task of teaching her friend to cook so is introducing Tabitha to various vendors and how to pick the best vegetables.  Upon returning to Julia's apartment, they discover something amiss, one of the guests from the previous night's festivities is dead in the building basement.  Not only is the death of a young woman terrible enough but she has been stabbed in the chest with Julia's own chef's knife.  Quickly, Julia and Tabitha become the main suspects in the brutal murder.  The only way out is to help solve the murder.

This book will be delightful for any fan of Julia Child, post-war Paris, cooking in general, or mystery lovers.  While Julia is present throughout, she does not overwhelm the story nor does the author treat the book as her term paper about all her Child research.  A pleasant read, with plenty of twists, the story will "stir" your imagination as you "strain" through the characters to figure out this "well-seasoned" who-dun-it.  Okay, I'll stop, but seriously, this was lots of fun.

I have to go start making dinner, hope I can find my chef's knife.