Book Review: Cooked to Death edited by Rhonda Gilliland and Michael Allan Mallory
Let’s return to the world of themed anthologies, a quick way to get a sample of various authors writing on a particular topic. In this case, it’s primarily Minnesota and other Midwestern writers doing crime and mystery short stories around the topic of food. Each story comes with a recipe, though whether that recipe actually is more than a mention in the story is wildly variable. Let’s dig in to these 17 dishes!
The book is arranged by type of recipe: appetizers, soups, entrees and desserts–heavy on the desserts. As might be expected from a food-based anthology, allergies are featured in several of the stories.
The opening story is “Shrimp Charmoula” by Carl Brookins. A private eye and his sweetie suffer a seemingly random home invasion. (This seems unlikely, and most likely there’s more to it that’s not in the story itself.) The title dish plays a part when one invader’s gluttony gets ahead of their common sense.
The closing story is “Just Desserts” by Michael Allan Mallory. A chef tries to take a relatively subtle revenge on a callous food critic, but he figures out who she is, and things go from bad to worse.
Some standouts in between:
“Dog Eat Dog” by David Housewright: A gangster abuses his pet as well as his underlings. This backfires spectacularly.
“Festival of Death” by Rhonda Gilliland which slightly fictionalizes a Saint Paul cultural fair (I have been to it and recognized the venue). The main subtheme is conflict between Russians and Ukrainians in 1995, which has resonance in the present day. (Other ethnic conflicts are mentioned.)
“He’s Not Dead Yet” by Jess Lourey has an old woman with a practical joker streak notice that things don’t look quite right at a funeral and investigating via a series of pranks. A little too mean to be really funny, but an interesting approach.
A couple of the stories veer into fantasy; I won’t spoil which ones.
All the stories are very short, which causes some to be more slight than I’d prefer, but does mean they’re over quickly. The local flavor makes the collection more savory to upper midwest folks, and I see that there’s already a sequel collection.
Content note: Murder, suicidal ideation, infidelity, animal abuse. Older teens on up should be able to handle it, but the anthology is aimed at middle aged folks on up.
Recommended to mystery fans who can cook–this one would make a nice gift for someone who does not have a lot of time for reading because of the bite-sized stories.
