In Murder Most Royal, the third S.J. Bennett volume featuring Queen Elizabeth solving murders, is set during Christmastime at Sandringham. It’s Christmas Eve at Page 46:
"For her part, no amount of makeup and sparkles could disguise the Queen’s pink nose and red eyes, and now her voice was becoming so hoarse she could hardly talk. However, a little Dubonnet Zaza cocktail with a twist of orange helped her see the world in a rosier light.
“Charles made his way across the saloon towards her and she raised her glass to him. The cocktail was hitting the spot.”
Page 48:
“Mercifully, the gong went, which meant dinner. . . . The wine was excellent and the venison cooked to perfection.”
Page 52:
“Luckily, the dining room doors opened at precisely this [difficult] moment to allow a procession of footmen to deliver towering individual souffles dusted with icing sugar and decorated with filigree chocolate holly leaves.”
Page 53:
“The following morning the Queen felt worse. Her head hammered. She put it down to the champagne and possibly Zaza cocktail. She could barely open her eyes.”
In Grisham’s sequel to The Firm, The Exchange, Mitch’s wife Abby is a cookbook editor and some of the chefs use their kitchen to test new recipes. A lot of delicious food is consumed.
Tim Dorsey just seized on the Pandemic as the setting for Serge and Coleman’s latest lunacies in The Maltese Iguana. At page 153 the neighbors are playing Monopoly and needing to munch:
"‘I forgot,’ said Jen-Jen. ‘There’s a white giant casserole dish in the oven. Nachos supreme.’
"Everyone shut up and leaned forward in rapt attention. ‘don’t be f_cking with us.’
"I’m not,’ said Jen-Jen. ‘Mounds of melted cheese, jalapenos, ground beef, salsa. The bowls of sour cream and guacamole are already on the counter --’
"A stampede.
"Potholders landed on the playing board, followed by the serving dish. Nobody was sitting, just hunched forward at the waist with utensils and places.
“Twenty minutes later, the neighbors were angled backward in their chairs wiping mouths with napkins and burping . . . Moments after that, they were again standing maniacally over the ceramic dish. When the onslaught was over, Serve stared in resignation at the smoldering war zone. Then he memorized where all the pieces were before taking the board to the sink and gingerly scrubbing off the periodic table of nacho elements.”
In Resurection Walk, Michael Connelly teams his two half-brother protagonists (each of their own series), Lincoln lawyer Mickey Haller and irascible now-retired LAPD detective Harry Bosch. At page 398, Mickey invites his daughter to dinner celebrating winning a daunting case where his client was railroaded into accepting a prison sentence for a homicide she didn’t commit. He suggests his usual choices:
The book ends without dinner because after rendering the correct judgment, the judge figures out how he bought time to secure the vital evidence to free his client and asks if Mickey has a toothbrush in his briefcase before the marshal escorts him to serve a night in lockup for contempt of court.
I’m reading it now. Your spoiler alert should have been at the very beginning since you gave away the verdict. However I always assume he will win his cases.
The Upstairs Delicatessen is critic Dwight Garner’s food memoir. It’s actually part memoir, part compilation of excerpts and references from many books, fiction and nonfiction, and films. Well written, wide-ranging, and breezy. I’m really enjoying it.
In the current Loren Estleman Amos Walker volume City Walls, Detroit private detective Walker serves himself a hard-boiled breakfast at page 112:
“I shuffled out into the kitchen, where the coffeemaker pouted at me on the counter; I’d charged it and forgotten to activate the timer. While it gurgled I sorted through the greasy crumples of brown paper on the table, looking for nutritious crumbs. I’d grabbed a couple of doughnuts and a paper cup of paintstrip at the all-night place on the way home from the police impound lot, but it sure wasn’t Krispy Kreme: It gave me indigestion and left me just as hungry. I fried the last strip of bacon from the package and crunched it while I brought in the morning Free Press, and all the while the carafe was filling like an hourglass with a broken mainspring.”
Tomorrow’s date is appropriate to current reading material. In A Galway Epiphany, Ken Bruen’s morose and very good Jameson boilermaker consumer Jack Taylor is buying breakfast for a former Rolling Stones roadie at Page 162.
"'Could I get
"Eggs, fried soft.
"Sausages.
"Rashers.
"Toast.
“Pot of tea?”
Keefer let out a sigh, said,
“Dude, that’s hard core.”
Then to the waitress,
“I’ll risk the same with an ambulance standing by.”
She stood for a moment, then walked away, uncertainty in her stride.
Keefer asked,
“Tea, really?”
I tried to explain to him that a fry-up tea is the only rider. He wasn’t convinced but let it slide . . .
. . .
The food came. It looked like a veritable avalanche of food.
Gouda Friends by Cathy Yardley. Fiction with A LOT of food on the side…& Why yes, there are Cheesy puns and yes it is a romance. It’s the 2nd of a series following a group of HS best friends. Each book focuses on a diff character & stands alone just fine.
“Let’s see . . . we’ve got some onion soup, a bacon-and-gruyère quiche, endive salad, and some chocolate croissants, covering breakfast and lunch bases,” he said. “Those are from French Bistro. Got a cubano from Monster Sandwich, or a buffalo chicken sandwich with blue cheese. You still like blue cheese, I assume?” She rolled her eyes. “If it’s cheese, I like it.” “Some spring rolls and a spicy black bean burger from Healthy Bites. Some kick-ass barbacoa street tacos from our Oaxacan restaurant . . . and, um, some pierogies. They’re from the restaurant that rents one of our kitchens—I haven’t really tried much there.” Tam’s stomach growled again. “Oh my God, I’m starving.”
