More Mystery Food

I'm guest blogging this week at Catherine Mambretti's blog: Postcard Mysteries. Catherine, a mystery author herself, blogs about jury trials and other issues of crime and punishment -- very interesting: check it out.

Catherine invited me to write about food in courtroom dramas (especially, what did the jury eat), and in other detective fiction. See my post here. More will follow later this week, interspersed with her ongoing posts.

Food in literature is one of my pleasures, and I often review books in terms of the way that food is used for creating atmosphere, character, ironic detachment, or whatever. Here are links to more posts about food and detective stories:

• What do members of the Yiddish Policemen's Union Eat? about Chabon's book and some of the borscht-belt food that he invokes.
  
• Tuna-Noodle Casserole, Literary Version about Robert Parker's detective stories and one particular example of his pretensions about food.
• Elmore Leonard's Kitchen about one mystery where several key scenes take place in the kitchen, and where food is quite central to the characters' development.
  
• Dining with Exotic Policemen about Chinese author Qiu Xiaolong’s mystery novel Death of a Red Heroine and the exotic foods eaten by the detective, including snake.
  
• Tony Hillerman (link to his obituary)

Also, Catherine wrote a guest post for this blog recently: Comment on Chinese Food.