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Mystery Meat, Beverage, and Your Choice of a Just Desserts

2009; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 83; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2009.0121

1945-8134

J. Madison Davis,

Wine Industry and Tourism

f "1 ^ k A INTERNATIONAL BY J. MADISON DAVIS Mystery Meat, Beverage, and Your Choice of a Just Desserts e*TT Although the term "culinary mystery'' sounds like something served ina school cafeteria,one of the most flourishingsub-genres of the mystery today features chefs,caterers, restaurateurs,and othermembers of the food industries.Rather like theacademic setting in mysteries, theworld ofhaute cuisine provides lotsof opportunities forodd, colorful characters obsessed with perfect ing their work and achieving recognition ina field cabalistic to the masses. Temperamental chefs, like absent-minded professors, have become stock characters and a standard ingredient ingenerally light-hearted mysteries. As with aca demics, so the jokegoes, thefeelingsare so intensebecause thestakes are so low.Murder over academic tenure. Murder over aMichelin rating.These seemmore likeharmless plot devices than reality tomost people?although restaurant ratingshave been blamed in thepress forat leastone chefs suicide. Certainly cooking has shown up as an importantelement inmysteries of thepast. Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe was a gourmand and emerged fromhis brownstone tobe an honored guest at a feastby famous chefs inTooMany Cooks (1938). Nearly fifty years later, Kansas writer Virginia Richmay have begun thecurrent women's-oriented sub-genrewith The Cooking School Murders (1982),The BakedBean Supper Murders (1983), and TheNantucketDietMurders (1985).AfterRich passed away, Nancy Pickard continued theseries.Rich's amateur sleuth, thewidowed cook Eugenia Potter, inspired a wave of imitators. However, themarket forculinarymysteries likelybegan a fewyears earlierwith thepopularity of Someone IsKilling the GreatChefsofEurope,by Ivan and Nan Lyons (1976). Ivan,who was a show-business reporterand January-February 2009 1 9 Grime &Mysteky the founder of Science Associates publishing company, was on a diet when he and his wife conceived a comicmystery inwhich a deranged dieter kills chefs in themanner sug gested by their most famous dishes.1 One isdrowned ina lobster tank,for example, and what happens to the pressed duck specialist, well, isn't very appetizing. Successful comic mysteries are relatively uncommon, and the book became very popular, lead ing to themovie Who Is Killing the Great GhefsofEurope? (1978), starring Georee Seeal, Jacqueline Bisset, and Robert Morley, and to subsequent novels by the Lyonses: Champagne Blues (1979), Sold (1982), The Presi dent Is Coming toLunch (1988), and Someone Is Killing theGreat Chefs of America (1993). The rotundMorley, whose forte was playing humor ous, effete characters, won several awards for his performance. In a memorable adaptation of short-story master Stanley Ellin's "Specialty of the House" (Alfred Hitchcock Pres ents, 1959),Morley similarly played a gourmet introducing an overly curious acquaintance to a special entree at his private club, a dish one shouldn't be too curious about lest one become an ingredient. In January 1978, beforeWho Is Killing? was released in movie theaters, an episode ofColumbo entitled "Murder Under Glass" with amurderous chef played by Louis Jourdan aired on NBC. Directed by JonathanDemme (who laterwon an Oscar forSilence of theLambs), this episode is consid ered one of thebest in theColumbo series and was likely inspired by the success of the Lyonses' novel.2 While stock character chefs are usually portrayed as over-refined, obsessive, and oh so suitable to kill or be killed, caterers, particularly single or widowed women who are trying to make their businesses suc ceed, have become a favorite form of amateur detectives since Rich's nov els. Caterers meet many people and become involved in weddings, par ties, and other events where it is con venient foran author to round up a group of suspects, particularly those with family animosities. In series books, this comes off as the "angel of death" scenario so common in mysteries. When Jessica Fletcher of Murder, SheWrote steps offthe train, someone is as good as dead. So, too, with these caterers, but never from incompetently serving a botulinus laced salmon mousse. Diane Mott Davidson is thecur rent queen of the culinarymystery writers. Catering toNobody (1990) introduced her amateur detective Goldy Bear Schulz, but Davidson also persuaded her editor to include recipes. Although recipes had occa sionally been included in the past, no one else was doing this at the time. Davidson, who went to col lege with Hillary Clinton and was persuaded by the futureFirst Lady to join theYoung Republicans,3...