Culinary Mysteries (part 1)

Discussed and mentioned

Ellie Alexander’s Bake Shop Mysteries

Catering to Nobody (1990) Diane Mott Davidson

Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series

Katherine Hall Page’s Faith Fairchild series

“The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding” (1960) Agatha Christie

Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swenson series

Diane Mott Davidson’s Goldy Schulz Books

Strong Poison (1930) Dorothy L. Sayers

Too Many Cooks (1938) Rex Stout

Mastering the Art of French Murder (2023) Colleen Cambridge

Dining with Sherlock Holmes (1976) Julia Carlson Rosenblatt & Frederic H. Sonnenschmidt

The Peter Wimsey Cookbook (1981) Elizabeth Bond Ryan & William J. Eakins

The Nero Wolfe Cookbook (1973) Rex Stout

Knife Skills for Beginners (2024) Orland Murrin

Arsenic and Adobo (2021) Mia P. Manansala

Aunty Lee’s Delights (2013) Ovidia Yu

Abby Collette’s Ice Cream Parlor Mysteries

Didi Dodo, Future Spy (2019) Tom Angleberger

Crime reads article link: https://crimereads.com/a-foretaste-of-culinary-cozy-mysteries/

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Transcript

This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.

Sarah	Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah.
Brook	And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery.
Sarah	Hi, Brook.
Brook	Hi, Sarah. It’s so good to be talking with you again about mysteries.
Sarah	I know I’ve said it before and you’ve said it as well. This is the kind of best time of the week for both of us.
Brook	Absolutely.
Sarah	So, when I say culinary mysteries, Brook, what kind of mystery do you think about?
Brook	My mind goes to like those 1980s and 90s where that really kicked off the cozy culinary.
Sarah	Me too. And until I started researching, I thought that’s where it started. Diane Mott Davidson, author of one of the first series of cozy mysteries featuring a caterer, was inspired to focus on food by Robert B. Parker’s writing in which his private detective sleuth, Spenser, who was introduced in 1973, makes multiple references to food.
Sarah	Her first book, Catering to Nobody, came out in 1990. Katherine Hall Page, whose sleuth is also a caterer, also released her first book in 1990. Page was named this year’s Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, which I think speaks to the influence of culinary mysteries on the genre.
Sarah	One of the features of culinary mysteries is the recipes. Both Katherine Hall Page and Diane Mott Davidson feature recipes in their books, but their books weren’t the first to do this. Rex Stout’s 1938 book, Too Many Cooks, sees Nero Wolfe attending a retreat of celebrated chefs and at least one edition features recipes, although the ebook version that I’ve read for this episode didn’t include any.
Sarah	A quick search reveals so many titles under this umbrella, so I think, Brook we should just get started talking about culinary mysteries in which chefs and caterers stumble upon victims and solve mysteries behind their deaths.
Brook	Yes. Thanks for that summary, Sarah. It is a much bigger sub-genre than I had first realized. And obviously I had my dates wrong because the ones you mentioned that where my mind instantly went to were 1990s. This is not 1980s. Um, and in fact, the very first, I would say the very first cozy mystery and definitely the first culinary mystery I ever read was a Diane Mott Davidson.
Sarah	I actually thought that Joanne Fluke had started writing around the same time, but her Hannah Swenson series only started in 2001.
Brook	Hmm. Interesting.
Sarah	But hers her books also include um recipes. And I actually learned a little bit about baking cookies, even though I have been the cookie baker in my house since I was about 13. My mom said, you eat too many cookies. If you want more, you have to make them yourself.
Brook	Oh, that was a great way to inspire a young a young baker. I did think of you in that way because I know that you enjoy baking. You you talk about baking quite often. And so I um thought of you reading one of your culinary mysteries and with a batch of cookies or muffins in the oven. And and that was just a really a great visual for me. And in fact, I think that is part of what makes these so enticing is that beyond other survival things like family and sleep and love, food is something we all must have. Everybody eats.
Sarah	Exactly. And food and drink have played a role in mysteries for, you know, almost since the beginning, right? They are excellent vehicles for poison.
Brook	Mm-hmm.
Sarah	And we know that Agatha Christie, you know, loved poison and often it was in the food. And you know I can think of at least one Poirot short story. It’s “The Mystery of the Christmas Pudding”. I think where there’s you know food plays a role. And you know you think of Ariadne Oliver. You associate her with apples.
Brook	Mm-hmm.
Sarah	And that’s a great way to create a character that people remember, right, is is through that association with food.
Brook	Absolutely. And I think that, as you said, many of those use the food as a way to ah get the poison to the right person. Because poisoning is such a great amateur sleuth set up. Because you know you have everyday people, not only as the murderer, because they can access this these ah toxins and get them into food, but then a way for an amateur sleuth to then solve that ah that murder. Food just works really well in that way.
Sarah	I agree. And someone who works in the food service industry, right? If you’re a caterer, lots of reason for you to be encountering different people and be in different homes. And, so you know, maybe you have to stretch to figure out why you might be searching through the study, but ah certainly gives you access to speak to a lot of ah people.
Brook	Yeah, that’s a great point. Diane Mott Davidson, actually I read a short interview online from her and she said that um the people who hire caterers often will share secrets and you know discuss things behind the scenes because they’re just discounting or she said they think caterers are deaf. But um we know what she means. They discount them. They think that they’re sort of invisible. And so these behind the scenes people, which we see in a lot of different ways, the um the help gets discounted and then can learn some secret tidbits. But I will say I worked for a caterer one summer between college years and I did not learn any juicy secrets or solve any murders, Sarah.
Sarah	Oh, that’s so disappointing, Brook. I was really hoping that you were going to share.
Brook	That it was my beginning of an amateur sleuth career.
Sarah	Exactly.
Brook	It didn’t it didn’t work out for me.
Brook	It said that Dorothy L. Sayer’s Strong Poison might be the first mystery to include a detailed recipe within the story. And it happens in the courtroom scene. um The judge recites the ingredients in the process for making the omelet, which the victim ate just prior to their death. So I thought that was a really interesting tidbit that we go clear back to the Golden Age.
Brook	Speaking of Nero Wolfe, he actually did a publicity tour where he gave away a recipe tin. Did you hear about that, Sarah?
Sarah	I read about this, yeah, when I was researching for today.
Brook	I think that’s so fun. And apparently the little recipe box, I think you got 12 recipes. If you bought the book, um, they’re actually worth more today, like $3,700 than the ah first edition of the book.
Sarah	Isn’t that interesting?
Brook	Yes, some early swag.
Sarah	Exactly. Well, and I think that would be actually a really neat way to promote your book, right? If you were skilled in the kitchen to say, as part of a book tour, I’m going to cook a meal for 10 lucky readers. And can you just not imagine the excitement ah if you know you got to sit down and eat something that Katherine Hall Page had had cooked?
Brook	I love that idea. and even if It’d be fantastic if it was one of these top chefs that was also an author, but even just somebody like you know Diane Mott Davidson, if they were to say, we’re going to do this event and you can come and you can experience some of these iconic recipes from the catering series and ah you know ah an entire world there can be built out and and experience it. With other people who also love culinary mysteries, I could just see that that would be a lot of fun.
Sarah	I think I’ve seen videos of Ellie Alexander showing how to prepare some of the recipes that are in her books.
Brook	Yeah, she’s a great example of an author who really does interact with her fans a lot and create ah events or activities for them to partake in in the world of ah The Bake Shop Mysteries.
Brook	I actually read another Ellie Alexander this week ah preparing for the show um and she not only in real life but also in the stories really builds out that world.
Sarah	Well, I am going to have to read an Ellie Alexander book. Maybe I’ll put it on my winter reading list because you’ve brought her up several times and I know she’s got a ah number of different series. So I’m sure there’s, I’m sure I’ll love it. Um, I just need to choose one.
Brook	Yeah, and several of the series revolve around food, food and drink, so culinary mysteries.
Sarah	So ah one of the kind of spin offs that we can see with these kinds of mysteries is cookbooks, collections of the recipes that have been published with the books, either published on their their websites or published as actual recipes, because I think people do follow those recipes.
Brook	Yeah, there’s a ah big draw for these books that ah not only is the storyline surrounding the world of food, but then the recipes appear within the story. So you can kind of feel like you’re part of the world. You can, you can try the recipe.
Sarah	Mm hmm. And and the I don’t know if it’s the opposite of that, but there is a series of books where Julia Child, who is a famous cook and ah cookbook author, her friend is the sleuth, but you know Julia Child is kind of part of the investigation. And that series starts with Mastering the Art of French Murder, which is a play on the title of Child’s first cookbook. And that’s written by Colleen Cambridge. And and I enjoyed that book.
Brook	Yeah, I I have not read that yet, but I love the idea, as I’ve said before in other subgenres, of using real people from history as a way to you know create um a better sense of the world and ah make you feel like it it might be real.
Brook	I was interested to learn from a crime reads article that cookbooks were compiled. ah There’s Dining with Sherlock Holmes from 1976, the Peter Whimsey Cookbook from 1981, and the Nero Wolfe Cookbook from 1973. These were compiled by you know not the authors, but other authors. people who were interested in the in the ah recipes and the storylines that incorporated them and then compiled them into cookbooks and I had i had never learned that before.
Sarah	Well, that’s so fun. And I mean, as you say, food is something that is universal, right? We all need to eat and to, you know, recreate some of the some of the meals or some of the dishes that are mentioned in some of these books, because um Peter Winsey is another great example of one of those characters who certainly appreciated good food um and to you know to be able to recreate some of that. And it you know it’s almost as if that character is at the table with you.
Brook	Right. When I read that article, I was reminded of a friend that I had many years ago. She’s still a friend, but I learned this about her many years ago, that she would go to the library and check out cookbooks just like you and I might go and check out some fiction. And without, you know, any grand intention of cooking the recipes necessarily but she just loved to read the recipes you know many times those books have beautiful pictures of food and so she would enjoy a recipe book like a magazine or something and you know read the recipes and I imagined that people who then would check out these books or buy these books about Sherlock Holmes recipes or Peter Whimsey, you know Then it adds just an entirely new level week the food can be enjoyed. But then you have this entire fictional world that you can place it in so just a really neat ah addition to those ah fictional worlds.
Sarah	Oh that’s really fun.
Sarah	One subgenre of this subgenre would be people who actually have experience as being chefs or caterers or bakers ah writing these mysteries. So I know that Anthony Bourdain published a couple of mysteries that are set in restaurants, the high intensity, high emotion setting that that that would be.
Sarah	And Orlando Murin, who is a chef, cookbook author. He was a semi-finalist on um on a cooking show, and he writes for the BBC. He published a book, I think it was earlier this year, called Knife Skills for Beginners, and his sleuth is a professional chef ah who actually is um filling in for someone else at a cooking school, a week-long retreat at ah at a cooking school. And again, this is a really great setup for um a rotating cast of characters, right?
Brook	Mm hmm.
Sarah	Because you’ve got different people from different backgrounds who’ve decided that they want to have this intense week of of improving their culinary skills. And so it enables the sleuth to meet all of these different people and of course there’s there’s a death and and so he gets to investigate it as well.
Brook	That’s just fantastic to have that real world experience. Um, and it is very high pressure, isn’t it? Like sometimes when you learn what really goes on behind the scenes in one of those, you know, top kitchens, it’s very stressful. Um, almost a drill sergeant like leader. And, um, yeah, I love the idea of those people that have really experienced it writing the story.
Sarah	Well, it just brings some some authenticity, right? and And we’ve talked before about physicians writing medical mysteries or lawyers writing legal mysteries. So it makes sense that um people with culinary backgrounds are writing culinary mysteries.
Sarah	I know, you know, we’ve been talking about kind of the early culinary mysteries, but there have been a few released in the last decade or so that have been quite popular. So I think of Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala or Aunty Lee’s Delights and that series set in Singapore by Ovidia Yu. In both of those examples, it’s not only food that plays a big part in the mystery and the story, but also family.
Brook	Oh, it’s funny you should say that because when you started talking about these more contemporary recent series, the first one that came to mind for me was, um, Abby Collette’s Ice Cream Parlor mystery series. And it’s similar, the sleuth returns back to the town where her family had always had an ice cream parlor and now it’s her turn to operate the shop and um you know mysteries ensue. But I think the connection with family and food is just natural, isn’t it?
Sarah	Absolutely. Because you know, you’re often enjoying a meal with friends or family, right? It’s one of those pleasures that we have.
Brook	And then it gets that group together and you don’t know what kind of conflicts might erupt.
Sarah	Yeah, that kind of extended family setting can lead to some great conflicts.
Brook	So Sarah, have you ever tried a recipe from a culinary mystery?
Sarah	I haven’t. Although my son and I were reading a book that he had borrowed from the library, and it was called Didi Dodo, Future Spy. And ah it features a dodo who wants to become a spy and his companion is a chef, a dodo who is a chef. And ah in it, there is a recipe for I think they make cookies and they’re you know they have this secret ingredient in the cookies. It wasn’t a recipe that I was going to follow, but my my son thought I should take a picture of it. I think pickle juice was the key ingredient, and I just don’t think that that belongs in cookies.
Brook	Okay, first of all, I think it’s very cute that he wanted you to ah document this recipe because you are the cookie baker, as you said.
Sarah	Yes, yeah, yeah.
Brook	But yeah, I’m with you. I’m not sure about pickle juice in a cookie.
Sarah	I did think it was really interesting that culinary mysteries are something that we see also in mysteries for younger readers. And it was quite unintentional that he had chosen this book. And as we were reading it, I knew that we were going to be doing this episode. And I thought, oh, my goodness, like, this is incredible. um And the fact that there’s a recipe in that, you know, I thought was really, really interesting.
Brook	That is interesting.
Sarah	What about you, Brook? Have you tried any recipes from a culinary mystery?
Brook	Well, I actually have some recipes in my own series. I would not by any stretch of the imagination say that these are culinary mysteries, but I feel like they’re a little bonus. So if I refer to Grandma Lily’s baking a certain kind of cake, then many times either my newsletter subscribers or just in the back of the book, I’ll include the recipe.
Sarah	Well, Brook, I’m going to have to try one of the recipes from your books now.
Brook	That would be lovely. I would love to have the cookie baker bake one of my recipes.
Sarah	Brook, I’ve really enjoyed talking about food and mysteries today with you.
Brook	It’s been a lot of fun, Sarah, but for today, thank you for joining us on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook.
Sarah	And I’m Sarah and we both love mystery.