This week's contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books.A TASTY WAY TO DIE is recorded in my reading for 1999, so I guess that is not so long ago, but I think it may be the only one I've read by this author.
According to Fantastic Fiction, this is the second title in a 10 title series writing 1989-2000, featuring Darina Lisle, a rising young cook and caterer.
Blurb for A TASTY WAY TO DIE
Tall, attractive Darina Lisle, recently shed of her own catering business, pitches in to help former school chum Eve--an ambitious London caterer--out of a predicament. The sick woman Darina temporarily replaces soon dies from eating a poisoned mushroom, probably meant for Eve. A subsequent poisoning (hemlock this time) discovered by Darina provides some of the best nonfood description in the book. Long on food preparation, short on action, this one stimulates enough juices to keep the pages turning. Mostly for gastronomes.
Fantastic Fiction suggests that if I like A TASTY WAY TO DIE, I might also like MURDER IS BINDING, the first in the Booktown Mystery series by Lorna Barrett.Alternatively I might enjoy CARBS & CADAVERS, the first in the Supper Club series by J. B. Stanley.
Now both these books are too recent to qualify as "forgotten" but perhaps you have some culinary crime fiction titles to recommend?
Joanne Fluke is another who is trying to titivate our crime fiction taste buds. Is this just a modern phenomenon? I think not. Delicious Evil lists some interesting Food Mystery Novels and you can probably suggest a lot of classics where poisoning is a central theme.
