Spiced to Death

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The Gourmet Detective: He's got a gift for food, a taste for adventure-and a nose for nabbing a killer.Critics hailed Peter King's debut novel, The Gourmet Detective, the first in a delicious mystery series featuring the Gourmet Detective-a chef-turned-culinary-sleuth.Now, in his second outing, the Gourmet Detective is on his way from London to New York to authenticate Ko-Feng-an expensive spice, lost for centuries, and lauded for its taste and purported qualities as an aphrodisiac. But when the Ko-Feng disappears under his nose-and a culinary colleague turns up dead-the Gourmet Detective becomes the prime suspect in a case more slippery than Oysters Rockefeller. As he cooks up a scheme to find the killer, the Gourmet Detective embarks on a mouth-watering romp through the ethnic eateries of New York City, tasting his way to final justice.From Library JournalThough known only as the Gourmet Detective (The Gourmet Detective, St. Martin's, 1996), this otherwise unnamed English sleuth mainly searches for rare food ingredients. Summoned by a friend to New York, he authenticates a secretive shipment of Ko Feng, a newly rediscovered spice supposedly unknown for 500 years. Someone steals the Ko Feng, however, and kills the friend. The police?in the form of a most attractive Italian female sergeant?request the Gourmet Detective's assistance, which he renders with charming aplomb. A convenient international food fair and several more beautiful women spur him on. Recommended.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsThe Gourmet Detective's second adventure (The Gourmet Detective, 1996) brings the eponymous muncher/sipper/snooper to New York Harbor from London to identify a shipment of Ko Feng, a spice believed extinct for the past 500 years. When the Ko Feng disappears and the American friend/employer of our foodie hero is killed, the latter cheerfully tells the widow to keep busy'' as he himself plunges into a round of Big Apple bashes to locate the bad guy who's making a killing on the gourmet black market. Lt. Gaines of Unusual Crimes grumpily permits him fellow-traveler status with the cops (even procuring some King's Balm for his indigestion), and the Detective makes canap‚ contact with several women--among themattractive'' Italian-American Sgt. Gabriella Rossini, whose family owns a restaurant, and attractive'' Ayesha Rifkin, who caters ancient cuisines. Pity poor,attractive'' Gloria Branson, then, who merely investigates insurance fraud. (Or does she?) There are interviews with Turkish and Chinese culinary kingpins, and the reader is also titillated by an illegal sale of deep-discount goods under a devastated Bronx church--a sale to which the whole city seems privy. But the greater appeal here is to shoppers rather than eaters or lovers. Oh, yes, there's another killing. The author tries again to sell satire (without humor) and a thoroughly effete character on the strength of pro forma sexual pretenses and glorified gustatory lusts. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.