Very Very Noir: "Total Chaos"

Total Chaos by Jean-Claude Izzo (1945-2000)

You couldn't imagine a less cozy mystery than this graphically violent police story about Marseilles around 30 years ago. Jean-Claude Izzo's Total Chaos (written in 1995) is dark and often ugly with lots of underworld characters from all the ethnic and social strata of the Marseilles underground and police force. It's narrated by a policeman named Fabio Montale, a native of the city. Unlike him, his friends, both alive and dead, are mainly petty criminals and hookers. His enemies are gangsters and maybe some of his fellow policemen. The plot centers on the deaths of his two best friends and a young woman, and his efforts to discover who killed them, and maybe get some revenge. 

I didn't like the book at all: just not my kind of literature. However, one feature of this novel did appeal to me very much: between the scenes of unpleasant violence and the depiction of unsavory characters, Fabio's narrative is full of very savory food descriptions. Food here is totally central to the essence of the main character/narrator and his milieu. You could almost cook following his descriptions: in fact, if you were familiar with the local cuisine, you probably could use them as recipes.

Since I'm not fond of novels with this much graphic violence, I'll just quote a few of the amazing food descriptions. 

First, here is Fabio's childhood memory of his family dining table:

"The whole family used to come here on Saturdays. There’d be big plates of pasta in sauce, with headless larks and meatballs cooked in the same sauce. The smells of tomatoes, basil, thyme, and bay filled the rooms. Bottles of rosé wine did the rounds amid much laughter." (p. 38). 

Next, his friend Honorine makes Fabio some food to take on his boat:

"I made you some foccaccia, Honorine had written on a little piece of paper. Foccaccia is made with pizza dough, filled with whatever you like, and served hot. Tonight, the filling was cured ham and mozzarella." (p. 44).

And Honorine cooks another dish:

"Honorine made stuffed peppers like no one else could. Romanian style, she called it. She’d fill the peppers with a stuffing of rice, sausage meat and a little beef, well salted and peppered, then place them in an earthenware casserole and cover them with water, add tomato coulis, thyme, bay and saw-wort, and let them cook on a very low flame, without covering. They tasted wonderful, especially if you poured a spoonful of crème fraîche over them at the last moment." (p. 161).  

Another Marseilles specialty, by Céleste, another friend:

"Céleste made better aïoli than anyone I knew, except Honorine. The cod was desalted just right, which is rare. Most people leave it to soak for too long, and give it only two soakings. It was best to soak it several times. Eight hours the first time, then three times two hours. It was also a good idea to poach it in simmering water, with fennel and pepper grains. Céleste also used a particular olive oil to give the aïoli a ‘lift.’ .... Her salads always tasted different." (p. 194).  

Fabio's colleague Pérol supplies some provisions:

"Pérol had brought beer and sandwiches. Tomatoes, anchovies and tuna. Not so easy to eat, but better than the usual revolting ham sandwiches." (p. 139).  

Simple foods reflect the Marseilles atmosphere throughout the novel.A meal with a friend at a place called Chez Mario:. 

"Mozzarella and tomatoes, with capers, anchovies and black olives, for starters. Spaghetti with clams as a main dish. Tiramisu for dessert. To drink, a Bandol, from the Pibarnon vineyards." (p. 75).

Besides the tastes and preparations, there is also frequently a memory of aromas:

"On Rue Longue-des-Capucins, the market was in full swing. Smells of coriander, cumin, curry, mint. The East. I turned right, through the Halle Delacroix, went into a bistro and ordered a double espresso and a few slices of bread and butter." (p. 79). 

Sometimes Fabio himself prepares the meal:

"I’d started cooking early in the morning, listening to old blues songs by Lightnin’ Hopkins. After washing the bass, I’d filled it with fennel, then drizzled olive oil over it. Then I made the lasagne sauce. The rest of the fennel had simmered gently in salt water, with a touch of butter. In a well-oiled pan, I gently fried slivers of onion, garlic and finely chopped pepper. A spoonful of vinegar soup, then I added tomatoes that I’d cut into little cubes and plunged in boiling water. When the water evaporated, I added the fennel." (p. 100).  

To wrap up...

In contrast to Izzo's very hard-boiled crime stories is the genre of cozy mysteries. These were just becoming popular in the 1990s when Izzo's Marseilles novels were written. The cozy mystery genre in fact was initially developed as a reaction against noir tales like this. The main focus of cozy  novels is the food (cute little lady detectives in cozy mysteries are often owners of food establishments), but I think Izzo's food is much more fascinating and appealing. The meals served in a lot of cozy mysteries probably wouldn't be as delicious as Fabio's dishes. 

If you like your police tales noir and graphic, you should read this book. I prefer my crime fiction to be somewhere in the middle, not cutesy-cozy and not ultra-violent. I like quite a few authors of this in-between style. such as Donna Leon, Martin Walker, Tony or Anne Hillerman, Elly Griffiths, Sujata Massey, Robert Parker, and quite a few others. Total Chaos is the first volume of a trilogy, but I don't think I'll be reading the other two volumes.

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Robert Parker's Jesse Stone

“Sea Change” is a 2007 movie based on one of Robert Parker’s novels featuring police chief Jesse Stone.
While he is a brilliant policeman, Stone has a serious drinking problem.

 

Tom Selleck is perfect in all of the Jesse Stone movies.

While he works, Stone drinks coffee: lots of coffee.

Jesse Stone’s dog goes wherever he goes, and watches him drinking every evening.

The movie has stunning visuals, as well as the two most wonderful features of Robert Parker’s novels:
fantastic, stylized dialog and several suspenseful plot lines.

“Fortune Favours the Dead”

“I went downstairs to call a man about a corpse” 

— Fortune Favours the Dead, p. 65

The hard-boiled detective was a particularly popular literary type in the 1920s through the 1940s. Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970), Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) and several others wrote about very colorful characters including Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Perry Mason, and The Continental Op. You may note that the most famous of this genre in its prime includes only men. Right!

Fortune Favours the Dead by Stephen Spotswood
Published 2020.
A much-appreciated Christmas gift from my sister.

Private detective Lillian Pentecost is a “lady gumshoe” in New York who has solved many cases that baffled the well-meaning but thick-headed police force. It's the 1940s, so she's special. She charges lots of money to her rich clients, and helps the poor ones gratis. In the first scene of Fortune Favours the Dead, Pentecost confronts a man with a gun. Fortunately, a circus girl named Willowjean Parker is on the scene and kills the gunman with a skillful throw of a knife — one of Parker’s many useful abilities that she picked up in the circus. 

Parker is the tough-talking narrator of the novel. We can tell she’s a tough-talking girl from her first meeting with Pentecost, which led to her being hired as Pentecost’s assistant, doing everything from stenography to dangerous pursuit of criminals. After introducing herself and her circus credentials, she jumps forward in time 5 years to her favorite case. This murder mystery is the gripping subject of the rest of the novel. Like the tough guys in classic detective fiction, she tolerates being beaten up, suspected, arrested, and questioned by the police; pursued romantically by individuals who were involved in the crimes, and being subject to plenty of criticism by her employer. She also eats in diners a lot -- egg salad sandwiches, roast beef sandwiches, and the like; also, Pentecost's cook creates very fine meals. Lots more hard-boiled stuff too. Like Nero Wolf's cook (to add another classic detective, with a strong resemblance).

Reading crime fiction of the hard-boiled sort is a favorite of Parker. She mentions many of the fictional detectives and also how she goes to newsstands and little bookshops to buy more novels, sometimes second-had for as little as a nickel. Clearly, she's basing her nonchalant hard-boiled style on these authors. In one case she even writes "I might have been playing at being the hard-boiled hero, but that's who she needed." (p. 259)

I enjoyed the semi-sarcastic style of this novel. Yes, it reminded me of Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of Sam Spade. My only criticism is that frequently, small details in the narrative were inappropriate for the era of World War II. Here's one example: there's a mention of "a better zip code," but zip codes were not introduced until 1963 (p. 52). Another example: an important character was a psychic who seemed to know more than she should about a number of people. Critically, she revealed many details about guests at the party where the murder took place; for example, she disclosed a woman guest's early and unannounced pregnancy. Parker figured out how the psychic knew this: she observed that the woman didn't join in drinking champagne. Alcohol avoidance in pregnancy, however, was not a recommended practice until the 1970s. (Pub Med confirms this timing in a review of attitudes towards alcohol in pregnancy.)

I also liked the very complicated plot with many twists and lots of action. The personalities of Pentecost, Parker, their clients, their suspects, and the people who help them are all very carefully and vividly defined. Suspense builds effectively, and the ending is satisfying. Of course I'm not going to give away anything about the plot or the perpetrators!

Review © 2022 mae sander.

The detective who didn't like food (much)

Detectives and policemen in classic mystery stories usually love their food, if it's mentioned at all. Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot fusses over his tisanes as much as over his mustache. Robert Parker's Spenser has very refined taste, though he also likes a donut. Tony Hillerman's Joe Leaphorn sometimes eats at the southwestern chain Lotaburger, and he also loves his wife's Indian stew. Mysteries set in Italy by Dona Leon and Andrea Camilleri, and in France by Martin Walker abound with descriptions of local food.

In contrast, in the novel In the Woods, author Tana French features a Detective Ryan, who does not seem to like food much at all. Many of the descriptions of what he ate or what he saw other people eat are downright unappetizing. As in many detective stories, Ryan and his partner Cassie Maddox's long hours of hard work often include stops for food or watching other people eat, but here, food hardly pleases Ryan, who narrates the story.

Tana French, In the Woods.
First novel in the series Dublin Murder Squad.
Each novel features a different detective.

Dublin Castle is the interesting location from which the fictitious Murder Squad works; I remember visiting there on a visit to Dublin in 2011, which made reading the book more fun. I enjoyed the suspense and the tightly constructed plot as well as the psychological thriller aspects of this book: I've become quite a fan of Tana French.

While suspense and detection are the important elements of the book, I was amused by the nonconformist food descriptions. For example, unpleasant sandwiches seem to be a frequent topic of Detective Ryan's disgust. Some examples of food in quick shops or pubs or at home with his flatmate Heather:

"'I said I’m not hungry,' I said, hearing the whine in my voice, but I opened the sandwich anyway: Cassie had a point, it was likely to be a very long day. We sat on the curb, and she pulled a bottle of lemon Coke out of her satchel. The sandwich was officially chicken and stuffing, but it tasted mainly of plastic wrapper, and the Coke was warm and too sweet. I felt slightly sick." (In the Woods, pp. 59-60). 

"They were eating toasted sandwiches; the salty, chemical smell made me feel sick. Outside the window the rain bucketed down a gutter." (p. 288).  

"I went into the kitchen and started making myself a sandwich, ham and Heather’s low-fat cheese— I’d forgotten to go shopping. The Guinness had left me bloated and uncomfortable." (p. 282).

Other people in the novel sometimes try to please Ryan with food including his mother and a potential witness named Mrs. Fitzgerald. They don't succeed:

"That weekend I went over to my parents’ house for Sunday dinner. ... 'Where’s Cassie today?' my mother asked after dinner. She had made macaroni and cheese— she has some idea that this is my favorite dish (which it may well have been, at some point in my life) and she cooks it, as a small timid expression of sympathy, whenever something in the papers indicates that a case of mine isn’t going well. Even the smell of it makes me claustrophobic and itchy." (p. 277).

"We stopped at Lowry’s and bought Mrs. Fitzgerald a tin of shortbread, to make up for the fact that we still hadn’t found her purse. Big mistake: that generation is compulsively competitive about generosity, and the biscuits meant she had to get a bag of scones out of the freezer and defrost them in the microwave and butter them and decant jam into a battered little dish, while I sat on the edge of her slippery sofa manically jiggling one knee until Cassie gave me a hairy look and I forced myself to stop. I knew I had to eat the damn things, too. ... "'Ah… turned out badly, did he?' Cassie said confidentially. 'Could I take another scone, Mrs. Fitzgerald? These are the nicest ones I’ve had in ages.' They were the only ones she’d had in ages. She dislikes scones on the grounds that they 'don’t taste like food.'" (pp. 300-303). 

Just once, under special circumstances, Cassie manages to give Ryan some comfort food:

"Cassie rummaged in the wardrobe, passed me a bottle of brandy and a glass. 'Have a shot of that while I make food. Eggs on toast?'...
"She turned from the frying pan to look at me, a wooden spoon in her hand. ... She switched off the stereo, popped the toast and piled the eggs on top of it. 'Here.' The smell made me realize how hungry I was. I shoveled the food down in huge mouthfuls, barely stopping to breathe; it was whole-grain bread and the eggs were redolent with herbs and spices, and nothing had ever tasted so richly delicious." (p. 396-397). 

Tana French is also good at poking a little fun at food fads and snobbery:

"Heather disappeared back into the kitchen, presumably to add horse-sized capsules of vitamin C and echinacea to her frenetically balanced diet. I went into my room and closed the door. I poured myself a drink— I keep a bottle of vodka and one of tonic behind my books, to avoid cozy convivial 'drinkies' with Heather." (pp. 104-105). 

"At 8: 17 p.m., according to the computer printout [of a phone tap], Andrews had ordered lasagna with smoked salmon, pesto and sun-dried tomato sauce. 'Jesus Christ,' I said, appalled." (pp. 417-418). 

"It had been well over a week since I had eaten an actual meal, with food groups and everything." (p. 433).

I'm aware that beyond the more traditional, suspenseful police procedurals and detective stories by authors like Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Martin Walker, Tony Hillerman as well as Tana French, there is a more recent genre of cozy mysteries. These often feature food to the extent that recipes are included, and frequently include characters who are in the food business as well. I am not much of a fan of cozy mysteries, so this blog post is not in any way about them. However this blog post IS copyright © 2020 by mae sander for this blog: maefood dot blogspot dot com, and if you are reading it elsewhere, it's been pirated.

Another Spenser Novel

"The cabbie drove me down from Route 1 to the center of town, through the hot green tunnel of July trees. Lawns were being watered, dogs were being called, bikes were being ridden, cookouts were being done, pools were being splashed drinks were being had, tennis was being played. Suburbia writ large. There was some kind of barbecue underway on the common around the meeting house. The smoke from the barbecue wagons hung over the folding tables in a light good-smelling haze. There were dogs there and children and a balloon man. I did not hear him whistle far and wee. If he had, it wouldn't have been for me." (Robert Parker, The Judas Goat, p. 157)

My 1983 paperback edition.

Back in the late 1970s when Robert Parker published The Judas Goat,  editors (as far as I know) were fanatic about the rule that one should not use the passive voice. I wonder if Parker had to fight to keep this paragraph as is. It reads as if he meant to demonstrate how the passive voice could work in his sparse style. Each time I reread it, I wonder about it. Did he mean to emphasize that in Suburbia all these things -- watering lawns, cooking out, etc -- were done without agency (the technical term critics use when they decry passive voice use)? I wish I knew.

In fact, Parker could really do a lot with language! Spenser, the fictitious private investigator who narrates the novels about himself, has a very powerful and entertaining voice. The Judas Goat is only the fifth of Parkers thirty-nine Spenser novels, so his exaggerated short sentences, wisecracks, and self-praising remarks hadn't yet become formulaic.

As always, Spenser's love of good food offers lots of chances for the reader to admire his prose. Sometimes the descriptions read as if he was auditioning to write for Jane and Michael Stern -- who published the first Road Food a year before The Judas Goat appeared. I suspect both were reflecting a trend of some kind.

On the way to the suburban scene in the quote, near his girlfriend Susan Silverman's house, Spenser had gone to Karl's Sausage Kitchen and Donovan's Package Store. (Parker always seemed to use real food places -- Karl's still existed as recently as 2012.) Once in Susan's kitchen, Spenser tells us:

"I found some Utica Club cream ale in the refrigerator and opened a can while I unpacked my delicatessen in the kitchen. There was veal loaf and pepper loaf and beer wurst, and Karl's liverwurst, which you could slice or spread and which made my blood flow a little faster when I thought of it. 

"I had bought two cartons of German potato salad and some pickles and a loaf of Westphalian rye and a jar of Dusseldorf mustard." (p. 158)

You get the idea. Quite a bit later, after greeting Susan whom he hasn't seen in a long time (during which he'd been out hunting assassins and killing some of them) they get around to eating -- "I put two slices of veal loaf on some rye bread, added a small application of Dusseldorf mustard, put another slice of bread on top and bit. I chewed and swallowed." (p. 164)

That's Spenser. His descriptions of killing bad guys are just as wry and detached as his descriptions of food. Another thing The Judas Goat has going for it is that the great character Hawk plays a big role. If you don't know Hawk, you should read this book. You could (re)read it even if you do.

P.S. If you didn't notice the reference in the quoted paragraph to an e. e. cummings poem, look at this. Spenser is not just sensitive, handsome, talented, cold-blooded, food-appreciating, and a fabulous lover of Susan Silverman -- he's also very well-read in poetry and world lit.

Some things don't seem to change: Robert Parker's Spenser

As I read Robert Parker's 1980 detective novel Looking for Rachel Wallace, I was slightly unnerved by how little in it was obsolete. The novel begins when Parker's cool, suave detective Spenser is hired to be a body guard for Rachel Wallace, a feminist/lesbian author who has received threats from shady anti-gay right wing organizations.

Though he's very macho, as in working out all the time, drinking a lot of beer, and always carrying a gun, Spenser is also quite open-minded: a combination that contributes to the appeal of these novels. His reaction to Rachel Wallace is to wisecrack, and she constantly reminds him that she has no sense of humor. However, he demonstrates that he takes her seriously and acts without prejudice.

The hatred of gays, communists, and social activists that motivates Rachel Wallace's attackers is all too familiar. Her attackers, as you'd expect in a good plot, turn out to have more motives than just their politics, but the people that follow them and the thugs they hire bear a creepy similarity to the alt-right and other extremists that have emerged as a force in the current US presidential election -- and how creepy is that?

In the Spenser novels, Parker always included a lot of notable characters of various types. Spenser's extraordinarily beautiful girlfriend Susan Silverman, for example, is a practicing psychotherapist with a PhD from Harvard. In later novels, Parker makes her kind of quirky and two-dimensional, but in this one she's a really enjoyable and self-assured character worthy of the respect of the author, the reader, and the other characters in the book.

Spenser expresses his semi-secret intellectual side by reading books. He impresses and maybe annoys Rachel Wallace not only by having read her book but also by saying it was a kind of repeat of Simone de Beauvoir, which he's obviously also read. Spenser demonstrates his sensitive side by enjoying fine dining and cooking, sometimes just for himself:

"I had cornbread and country sausage and broiled tomato for breakfast and read the Globe. Then I put on my gun and went looking for Mulready and Cody." (Kindle Locations 1976-1977)

 And sometimes for very appealing and sophisticated Susan:

"I had another Molson and brought my two pots to a boil again. In the big one I put a pound of spaghetti. In the small one with the steamer rack I put the frozen broccoli. I set the timer for nine minutes. ... 

We ... set the table while the spaghetti boiled and the broccoli steamed. The bell on the timer rang. I went to the kitchen and drained the broccoli and tried the spaghetti. It needed another minute. While it boiled I ran the Cuisinart another whirl and reblended my oil and spices. Then I tried the pasta. It was done. I drained it, put it back in the pot and tossed it with the spiced oil and broccoli. I put out the pot, the leftover loaves of Syrian bread that I bought for lunch, and a cold bottle of Soave Bolla. Then I held Susan’s chair. She sat down. I put another log on the fire, poured a dash of wine in her glass. She sipped it thoughtfully, then nodded at me. I filled her glass and then mine." (Kindle Locations 2214-2223)

As I read the book I wondered if the only obsolete detail was a reference to Master Charge. (If you aren't old enough to remember, Master Charge was the previous name for MasterCard, and changed around the time this book was published.)

Robert Parker died in 2010. But Spenser and Susan live!

Beautiful French-Canadian Meals with Inspector Gamache

A pudding du chômeur à l’érable from the blog FoodNouveau.

"The guests watched the sun set ... and enjoyed course after course, beginning with the chef’s amuse-bouche of local caribou. Reine-Marie had the escargots à l’ail, followed by seared duck breast with confit of wild ginger, mandarin and kumquat. Gamache started with fresh roquette from the garden and shaved parmesan then ordered the organic salmon with sorrel yogurt. ... 'And for dessert?'...'For Madame, we have fresh mint ice cream on an éclair filled with creamy dark organic chocolate, and for Monsieur a pudding du chômeur à l’érable avec crème chantilly.'*... Finally, when they could eat no more, the cheese cart arrived burdened with a selection of local cheeses made by the monks in the nearby Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoit-du-Lac." Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder, pages 21-22)

That's just the first meal in over 400 pages of country living, detecting, and dining by Inspector Armand Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie. It's a rather long-winded, description-heavy book -- the murder doesn't happen until page 111. Though the plot is fairly tight and the suspense relatively good, I'm tempted to say that food descriptions are my favorite part.

Here few more of MANY food descriptions, which I'm citing without explaining at just which point in the investigation breakfasts, dinners, snacks, and lunches appeared:

"Gamache looked down at a tray of frothy cold soups with delicate mint leaves and curled lemon rind floating on the top. Another tray held platters of open-faced sandwiches, roast beef, smoked salmon, tomato and Brie. The final tray held bottles of ginger beer, spruce beer, ginger ale, beer and a bucket with a light white wine on ice." (p. 146) 

"... sipping his cold cucumber and raspberry soup. There was a bit of dill in it, a hint of lemon and something sweet. Honey, he realized." (p. 204)

"He put a lobster salad in front of her. And Beauvoir got a hamburger and string fries. For the last twenty minutes they’d smelled the charcoals warming up in the huge barbecue in the garden, with the unmistakable summer scents of hot coals and lighter fluid. Beauvoir hadn’t stopped salivating. Between that and the sweating he thought he should order a cold beer. Just to prevent dehydration. The chief thought that sounded good, as did Lacoste, and before long each had a beer in a tall frosted glass." (p. 300)

"... on the village green, waving to the people tending the glowing embers around the stuffed lamb au jus wrapped in herbs and foil and buried before dawn. The meshoui, the traditional Québécois celebratory meal. For Canada Day." (p. 356)

The meals contribute to the Québécois atmosphere which the book works very hard to create. Though the descriptions are very enjoyable, in a way I feel as if all these details, including descriptions of the Auberge where the murder and investigation take place, are a bit forced. I think I like my mystery stories to keep the focus more thoroughly on the detecting.

I'm resisting the urge to compare the way Agatha Christie only suggests and sketches the surroundings, and gives details mainly when they show how time is advancing or when they will turn out to be clues. That said, I enjoyed this and one other of author Louise Penny's Armand Gamache detective stories, and most likely will read a few more.

Author Louise Penny with British actor Nathaniel Parker, who played
Insptector Gamache in the one and only TV movie of a book from the Gamache series.
I'll probably watch it soon, though the reviews were not superb.
UPDATE: Have watched & liked it.

*Chômeur à l’érable avec crème chantilly is a classic Quebec dessert -- in English, called poor man's maple pudding. It's a cake with a thick sauce made from maple syrup, garnished with whipped cream. And yes, maple syrup plays a large role in the cuisine in this book!

Burned Porridge or Kidneys and Bacon? -- Another Dorothy Sayers Mystery

"Mr. Parker was a bachelor, and occupied a Georgian but inconvenient flat... for which he paid a pound a week. His exertions in the cause of civilization were rewarded, not by the gift of diamond rings from empresses or munificent cheques from grateful Prime Ministers, but by a modest, though sufficient, salary, drawn from the pockets of the British taxpayers. He awoke, after a long day of arduous and inconclusive labor, to the smell of burnt porridge." (Dorothy Sayers, Whose Body, Pocket Book edition, p. 65)

It's easy to see how much Parker, the plain-clothes detective, differs from the very aristocratic Lord Peter Wimsey, star of the Dorothy Sayers mystery series. Lord Peter's wealth and privilege allow him to regard detecting as an amusing hobby. He enjoys life in a luxurious flat with an attentive personal servant, his valet Bunter. He can even afford to support Bunter's hobby of photographing crime scenes, buying Bunter cameras and darkroom equipment and leaving the valet's time free to develop his photos, though of course always photos of use to himself. In contrast, Parker can barely afford a decent breakfast.

While Parker is getting ready to eat his porridge -- clumsily prepared by his daily char woman Mrs. Munns -- he contemplates the "sordid absurdity of the human form." Before he gets to the porridge, though, he receives a phone call. It's Bunter with the message: "His lordship says he'd be very glad, sir, if you could make it convenient to step round to breakfast."

Sayers continues: "If the odour of kidneys and bacon had been wafted along the wire, Parker could not have experienced a more vivid sense of consolation." Parker's anticipation highlights difference between an aristocratic and a lower-middle class breakfast. Parker hurried to Lord Peter's flat, viciously saying to Mrs. Munns who was making bad tea: "You can take the porridge home for the family." On the social ladder in an English mystery story, there's always someone lower down. And when Parker arrived at Lord Peter's house, "Mr. Bunter served him with glorious food, incomparable coffee, and the Daily Mail before a blazing fire of wood and coal." (p. 65-66)

The culinary contrast between the social levels of the two detectives had come up the previous day while Parker was continuing his analysis of a complex murder and disappearance and eating "a plate of ham sandwiches and a bottle of Bass." Leaving Parker at work on the case, Lord Peter went to a restaurant named Windham's to meet a friend. I suspect that Sayers believes her readers will recognize this dining establishment; obviously I don't. The menu there clearly doesn't tend towards ham sandwiches and Bass! Lunch at Windham's, in fact, is consommé Polonais; a filet of sole; "the Montrachet '08" about which Lord Peter complains; and a salmis of game, which he declares "not bad." He also complains about a bit of cork in the wine glass. The Montrachet by the way, is from 1908 -- this mystery takes place in 1923! (p. 56-57)

Lord Peter's lifestyle, as portrayed in these small food scenes and throughout the book, might now, nearly 100 years later, be seen as immature and irresponsible. His nonchalance about work led me to suspect that he was very young -- but I now know that in Whose Body he was around 32 years old, just still without mature responsibilities! Moreover, in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (which I wrote about here) he was in his late thirties.

Food characterizes yet another random possible witness: "The Indian Colonel on the first floor was loud but unexpectedly friendly," Parker reports to Lord Peter as they are finishing breakfast. "He gave me Indian curry for supper and some very good whiskey." (p.68)

Monty Python's Cheese Shop didn't have any named cheeses either.

As Whose Body continues, Lord Peter again suffers for the sake of his detecting hobby when he has to eat in Salisbury in a dining establishment not at all up to his standards. "As he sat sadly consuming that impassive pale substance known to the English as 'cheese' unqualified (for there are cheeses which go openly by their names, as Stilton, Camembert, Gruyère, Wensleydale or Gorgonzola, but 'cheese' is cheese and everywhere the same), he inquired of the waiter [about a person of interest in his case]" (p. 80) Reminds me of the Monty Python cheese shop episode.

The most extreme example of food in relation to class concerns the missing man in Parker and Lord Peter's case: Sir Reuben Levy, a Jewish businessman. Levy is married to a woman once known to Lord Peter's mother, the Dowager Duchess. Needless to say, the wife's long-ago marriage to a Jew had caused quite a bit of objection among the antisemitic upper class to which she belonged. The Dowager Duchess speaks of this couple at some length:

"I used to know her quite well, you know, dear, ... when she was a girl. Christine Ford, she was then, and I remember so well the dreadful trouble there was about her marrying a Jew. That was before he made his money.... she fell in love with this Mr. Levy and eloped with him. ... I'm sure some Jews are very good people, and personally I'd much rather they believed something, though of course it must be very inconvenient, what with not working on Saturdays and circumcising the poor little babies and everything depending on the new moon and that funny kind of meat they have with such a slang-sounding name, and never being able to have bacon for breakfast." (p. 42-43)

Clearly Sayers, like her contemporary Agatha Christie, has a lot of casual antipathy towards Jews, based on half-truths and general prejudice -- and absolutely incorporates food stereotypes into the mix. I really wonder what she was referring to by "that funny kind of meat they have with such a slang-sounding name." I looked around on the web, and this passage is often quoted but the funny kind of meat is never explained.

From the rest of Sayers' portrayal of the character of Sir Reuben Levy, I would say that the Dowager Duchess reflects the author's own attitudes towards Jews -- purportedly well-meaning, badly-informed, and carelessly prejudiced. Agatha Christie can be even worse. Quite a lot has already been written about the prejudices reflected in these two famous mystery authors, but I'll end my say-so here. I wonder, as a Jew, why I tolerate their outdated bigotry instead of finding some other mysteries to read, or instead of watching the cleaned-up TV versions!

A Cookbook Mystery

My newest cookbook is A Taste of Murder edtited by Jo Grossman and Robert Weibezahl, published in 1999. 

Dozens of mystery authors contributed recipes with fascinating commentary to this compendium. Among these recipes, the editors interspersed quotes from earlier mystery authors, such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Rex Stout. Profits from the book were donated to some charity or other.

I'm enjoying looking through these literary reflections, reviewing the noted food choices of detectives I know, and learning about new detectives and mystery series that I've never read.

Turning first to my favorites, I started by reading the recipe "Susan Silverman's Boiled Water" contributed by Robert B. Parker, who was alive at the time the book was published, but died in 2010.

As any Parker fan knows, the character Susan Silverman appeared in many of his books: the long-time girlfriend of Parker's splendid detective creation, Spenser. While Spenser was a lover of good food of many sorts, Susan ate very little and maintained her very slender and beautiful figure for the entire 40 years or so covered by the mystery series. Spenser, to summarize, was happy to eat donuts with low-level cops, to eat haute cuisine when offered, or to cook delicious meals for Susan to pick on. Susan's recipe for boiled water, served "in a pretty cup with a squeeze of lemon and some Equal," illustrates her character perfectly.

At the beginning of the recipe, I read:

"When invited to participate in this cookbook, Robert Parker kindly responded: 

'Since there is a Spencer cookbook in development, I guess I better not. But should you wish to be frivolous, you might wish to use Susan's recipe for boiled water, which follows.'" (A Taste of Murder, p. 21)

Always on the lookout for cookbooks based on detective fiction, I immediately began to search for this book, hoping it had indeed been completed before Parker's death. It's a bibliographic mystery indeed! References to a Parker cookbook appeared in very interesting newspaper articles in the past. But I've seen no evidence that any Spenser cookbook was ever published in English at all. Examples:

"A collection of Spenser's recipes, to be edited by Kate Mattes, the owner of Kate's Mystery Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., is to be published by Delacorte." Who Done It? Food Can Thicken the Plot. by Nancy Harmon Jenkins, June 4, 1986.

"Robert Parker's 'Spenser' novels have been best-sellers, including his 13th, 'Taming a Sea Horse,' and the basis of a television series. He now has another book in the oven -- a cookbook. Parker has signed a contract with Delacorte to produce the 'Spenser Cookbook,' but he won't be writing it. He will be collaborating with Kate Mattes, owner of Kate's Mystery Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass. He'll cook and she'll write it down." -- from Glimpses by William C. Trott, United Press International, June 11, 1986. 

"The Japanese have also published a Spenser cookbook, because the detective's regularly displayed skills, along with insolence and a penchant for walloping people, include whipping up a good meal." -- from He Said He Had a Pistol; Then He Flashed a Knife. by John Kifner, June 11, 1997.

The page from A Taste of Murder.

I'd love to add a Parker/Spenser cookbook to my bookshelf, which includes recipe collections from Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, Simenon's Inspector Maigret, and Donna Leon's Venetian Detective Brunetti -- and now this collection from many authors. I'd be really curious to see a Spenser cookbook: especially one written as the food-loving writer Robert Parker cooked while his collaborator Kate Mattes wrote down the recipes. But I'm convinced that this isn't a reality and probably never will be.

Meanwhile, we had another stunning fall day here in Michigan, with record or near-record warmth.

I went for a brief bird walk...

And at the pond by the city dump, I saw a heron and a turtle.
Rarer birds that had been spotted here didn't appear when we were looking.

Food in Detective Stories

In a conversation today, I mentioned that I had written several posts about food in detective stories, but that the posts were buried among many others. So here's a partial list:

• The Empty Tureen
• Aurelio Zen eats a hamburger
• Commissario Brunetti Eats Lunch
• What did Colombo eat?
• Real Nero Wolfe, Black Orchids and Corned-Beef Hash and Secret Recipes (about Nero Wolfe)
• "The Janissary Tree"
• Murder -- with recipes? about The Body in the Ivy by Katherine Hall Page
• The Inspector's Dinner Party about Martin Beck books by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
• Inspector Montalbano Identifies Himself and "The Snack Thief" about the works of Andrea Camilleri
• P. D. James
• "A Bitter Feast" and "Reflecting the Sky" (about S. J. Rozan)
• Fabulous Book about The Last Chinese Chef
• "An Instance of the Fingerpost"
• 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 and Weird Food and not for Halloween 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)
• and my guest posts at the blog "The Hanged Juror" about Hillerman, Agatha Christie, and others.

Note: to see all the posts, click on the label "Food in Detective Fiction" at the bottom of this post.

Commissario Brunetti Eats Lunch

Delightful meals eaten during a crime investigation are among my favorite features of detective novels. For Christmas, I received a cookbook based on the novels of Donna Leon and her detective Guido Brunetti of the Venice police. I could make the delicious meals that Brunetti's wife cooks, such as veal liver with polenta (p. 210) -- which sounded so good in Death in a Strange Country. Or see if I could do better than Paola and Guido's daughter Chiara, who struggled to make mushroom-filled ravioli (p. 85) in A Noble Radiance.

I wasn't familiar with this series, so I purchased and read several of Leon's novels on my Kindle. Learning about the detective's favorite food before I read about the detective is really a total reversal! I'm so grateful to my friend Sheila who thought of this gift. Now I have both a Venetian cookbook and a new detective series to love.

Brunetti's wife Paola makes food to rival the French home cooking of Madame Maigret, Simenon's detective. I think her cooking sounds better than the food made by Nero Wolfe and his chef. Brunetti's lunches and snacks in typical little Venetian lunch-counters and bars are different -- but make me recall the local color in Whataburger, where Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn eat in the novels of Tony Hillerman. Leon's novels are a bit mannered but nowhere near the exaggerated style of Robert Parker, whose detectives' food habits come close to parody.

Food in detective fiction -- a glorious tradition!

The second-to-last donuts?

Jesse examined the contents of the doughnut box and selected another cinnamon-sugar.
"Moll?" he said, and offered the box.
"My God," Molly said. "keep those away from me, you animal."
Jesse shrugged and pushed the box toward Suit. Suit took out a honey-dip and bit into it. (p. 244)

I know that one more Jesse Stone novel by Robert Parker is about to be published, posthumously. And maybe more are in the publisher's pipeline. But somehow, I feel as if these characters, who speak so tersely and eat so appetizingly, are no longer quite as alive, now that their creator has died. Night and Day, source of this typical little quote, was published in hard-cover a year ago, just now in paperback. Another titled Split Image is coming in a day or two. Maybe there will even be one more with Spenser. But I'm sad that like so many good things, these series are all coming to an end. No more donuts.

Another Literary Death

I am still feeling sad for Robert B. Parker, and reread Night Passage, the first Jesse Stone detective novel. In it I found a wonderful passage about the food at a yacht club buffet attended by the unsavory town fathers of Paradise, MA -- including "a large molded salad made of lime Jell-O and cabbage; pigs in a blanket; goldfish crackers; ... Ritz crackers..." and lots more including a bowl of "Nuts and Bolts" which is salted cereal bits mixed with pretzels and peanuts.

But my memories of Parker have to be put on the back burner. I just found that J.D.Salinger has died at the age of 91, having been a recluse for close to 60 years. I still have my original-cover paperback of The Catcher in the Rye, which I read in junior high at the recommendation of a neighbor, Mrs. Rosen, who always suggested and loaned me books that no one else would share.

The New York Times has evidently been polishing his obit for years: it's very long and very very complete. See

J. D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91

Robert B. Parker

Robert Parker, author of the Spenser private detective novels and several other mystery series, has died, reports the Washington Post here. Parker's detective Spenser was a lover of good food, and during his searches for clues and witnesses, he often stopped to eat. He enjoyed a good donut with police friends or high-level gourmet food with his girlfriend Susan. I wrote about food as used in one of the Parker books here: Tuna-Noodle Casserole, Literary Version.

Parker was incredibly prolific, and I'll miss his regularly appearing books. According to the Post article Parker "was still at work, and preliminary reports indicated that he died at his desk."

Another Detective Eats Breakfast

"My name is Nate the Great. I am a detective. I work alone. Let me tell you about my last case: I had just eaten breakfast. It was a good breakfast. Pancakes, juice, pancakes, milk and pancakes. I like pancakes. The telephone rang."

So begins Nate the Great by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat. Like the other great detectives in books by Tony Hillerman, Robert Parker, Dashiell Hammett and other famous authors, Nate's breakfast tells you much about the detective himself, not merely a love of pancakes, but a whole detective attitude. Miriam read Nate the Great to me and Alice and I was delighted to find another detective in the breakfast tradition. I've blogged about this before.

V.I.Warshawski

My guest post today at Catherine's blog is about private investigator V.I. Warshawski, a character in the long-running detective series by Chicago author Sara Paretsky. Catherine's home -- and the focus of many of her posts about justice and jury duty -- is Chicago, so she's also a fan of this series. I love the food scenes Paretsky creates, especially when V.I.Warshawski raids her poorly stocked refrigerator after a tiring day chasing bad guys. As I said, V.I.'s habits provide a dramatic contrast to the refined cuisine in Robert Parker's novels.

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.

Elmore Leonard's Kitchen

I've been reading Elmore Leonard's Killshot, originally published in 1989. In this great, quick read, Leonard depicted a very ordinary Detroit area couple confronted accidentally by a pair of homicidal thugs, centering a complex plot around this confrontation.

Like many mystery writers, Leonard uses food and cooking to develop character. Tony Hillerman, Georges Simenon, Robert Parker and the more exotic/obscure Qiu Xiaolong all frequently tell readers about the eating habits of their policemen, detectives, victims, and criminals. I covered some of the ideas on this in my June 08, 2008, post: Tuna-Noodle Casserole, Literary Version.

Kitchens are the major setting for action in Killshot -- as well as other sites such as a hotel room where an unfinished breakfast helps touch off homicidal rage, a Seven-11 where victims and thugs go for snack food (the thugs steal it while holding up the store and killing the clerk), and so on. The foods in Killshot are a far cry from the very refined food habits of Parker's detective Spenser and Susan, his picky-eater psychoanalyst girlfriend, and even from Hillerman's detectives' favorite Whataburgers.

Leonard's readers get to know Carmen, wife of the novel's key couple, after the first acts of violence have occurred. She's in her kitchen. It's late afternoon; her phone, which is "on the wall next to the window over the kitchen sink" rings. At that moment "she had her hands in meat loaf, working a raw egg, onions and bread crumbs into the ground beef and pork." As she dries her hands, about to pick up the phone, she looks out into the woods. "She was pretty sure a man was standing in [the woods], in the tangle of dense branches; not at the edge but back in the gloom, his form blending, most of him concealed." It's one of the killer thugs: Carmen's domestic peace is about to be shattered. From this point, her kitchen is a focal point for action, and eventually the scene of the book's dramatic ending. (p. 106-107)

While Carmen serves her husband meat loaf, kielbasa and cabbage (p. 125), or pork chop and escalloped potato casserole (p. 239), Donna, the girlfriend who provides a hideout for the thugs serves mixed drinks and heats up a Swanson's chicken pie (p. 247) or a wide selection of other TV dinners and frozen foods. There's also a role for the thugs' choice of frozen pizza and frozen waffles (but detail here would be a spoiler).

Obviously, lots of non-food details also build the pictures of these antagonists, as well as depicting the policemen who ineptly try to save the situation. The suspenseful plot builds in a wonderful way, but the food and kitchen details add a great deal to the atmosphere Leonard created.

Tuna-Noodle Casserole, Literary Version

Robert Parker has always written in an incredibly mannered style, and as time goes by, the mannerisms become more and more the essential thing in his writing. He must really be able to do it fast -- I think he publishes two police novels per year. Spare Change, his latest paperback (at least it's dated June, 2008), is no exception to this trend. Spenser, Parker's original detective hero, always revealed various things about himself via food choices and reactions to food. The novels are set in the eternal present (from the 1960s or 70s to now) and the food always reflects the times, as well as the character of the diners.

In Spare Change, Sunny Randall, improbable wonder woman, psychoanalytic subject, and heroine of several recent novels does the same. In one scene, a tuna noodle casserole creates an opportunity for some of Parker's characteristic archness. Sunny is having lunch with her mother, her sister, and her sister's fiance Charles. "My mother had made tuna-noodle casserole and served it with a side dish of tomato aspic on a lettuce leaf. There was a basket of brown-and-serve rolls, and butter in a cut-glass dish," Sunny, the narrator, says.

The conversation turns to the wine that Charles had brought them. "It's really very drinkable," Charles says, pretending not to notice that the mother has poured herself a stiff bourbon. "From Alsace. Ideal for a convivial lunch, I think. Especially with fish." Sunny's mother mentions that tuna-noodle casserole had been her daughters' favorite. Sunny continues to report this conversation:

"It looks delicious," Charles said. "Do you make your own noodles?"
My mother nodded enthusiastically.
"I boil them first," my mother said. "But about a minute less than they need, so that they can cook in the casserole without getting overcooked."
Charles nodded vigorously.
"And are they homemade?"
"Sure, I made the whole casserole this morning."
"And the noodles?"
I couldn't tell if Charles was merely making conversation of if he was busting her chops for his own amusement.
"The noodles?" my mother said.
As far as my mother knew, noodles came in a box. She'd never imagined someone making them.
"Mom uses Prince noodles," I said.
"Absolutely," my mother said. "I swear by Prince."
"They'll be fun to try," Charles said. "Anyone been to Tuscany?"

And so on. I won't bore you by further comment on how Parker writes dialog. It's worth a read, even if his plots are now beyond improbable and his characters are less than 2-D.

Dining with Exotic Policemen

Like a Tony Hillerman novel set on the Indian reservation or a Georges Simenon novel set in mid-20th-century Paris, Qiu Xiaolong’s mystery novel Death of a Red Heroine (2000) paints an amazingly detailed portrait of a social reality. Details of the political and economic constraints in which Qiu’s Detective Chen works appear without interrupting Chen’s quest to solve a brutal murder mystery. He works obsessively, but like Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn or Simenon’s Inspector Maigret, Qiu has to stop to eat. As a result, food is a key in Qiu’s presentation of social reality.

Chen, recently appointed director of his small unit on the Shanghai police, begins his police work with only a few sketchy clues about the death of Guan – a well-known figure whose image and personality had been widely used in propaganda by the Communist regime. The year is 1990, and the events at Tiananmen Square are vividly remembered by all the participants, as are many earlier repressions and political upheavals in China. Political men are trying to make a career in new circumstances, free market economics are competing with old Communist control, and everyone looks over his shoulder in fear.

We meet Chen at his housewarming party for his new apartment – at the end of the party, he receives the phone call informing him of the murder he will investigate throughout the novel. Through describing this party, the author – writing in English for a western audience – puts us readers on notice that we haven’t learned everything about Chinese food by eating in Chinese restaurants. And by implication, that we have much to learn about a detective in Shanghai in an era of complex political maneuvering.

Chen’s guest, an old friend nicknamed “Overseas Chinese” Lu, is bringing a contribution to the banquet: a dish called Beggar’s Chicken cooked with “nothing but Yellow Mountains pine needles.” With it, Chen prepares to serve iced beer to his guests. Another guest brings a huge pine nut cake. The details of the food accompany a description of the apartment, small and poor to a Western reader, a luxury to residents of China. And at the end of the evening, Lu asks Chen to back him in financing a free-enterprise endeavor: he’s starting a restaurant. As it’s a tightly plotted book, Lu and his restaurant will play a role in the solution of the murder and conviction of the perp – but we are only on page 9.

And even before this, the two men who discovered the victim’s body had been fishing in a remote waterway. Alas, they had to report their grizzly find. So they missed the delicious soup they had imagined making from their freshly-caught fish. Food! A great device!

As he relentlessly pursues his investigation, Chen often stops for a meal. His deputy Li and Li's wife give him a special crab banquet. He stops in small locations. The readers learn of personal relationships, economic realities, and the challenges of police work through some of these meals. And as in so many police procedurals, even the contents of the victim's stomach -- her last meal -- is an important clue leading to her murderer.

The most remarkable and exotic such meal occurs during his risky trip to Guangzhou to find a key witness. Due to its proximity to Hong Kong, Guangzhou was much more westernized than Chen’s native Shanghai, and had become very expensive and in Communist terms corrupt. When he fails to get the assistance of the local police, Chen accepts help from a rich businessman named Ouyang, who cultivates Chen’s acquaintance because in addition to being a policeman, Chen is a successful poet. (Poetry is discussed as much as food in creating atmosphere for this unusual book.)

Ouyang treats Chen to dinner in a luxury restaurant run by a private entrepreneur. In contrast, on his police budget plus what he can afford out-of-pocket, Chen can hardly eat at street stalls in this go-go city. Here are some highlights from the description of the meal. You can see how this sets the exotic atmosphere:

“A big coal-burning stove and two small ones comprised the open kitchen. Its only sign was a red paper lantern….Beneath it were live eels, frogs, clams, and fish squirming and swimming in water-filled wooden basins and buckets. There was also an impressive glass cage with several snakes of various sizes and shapes. Customers could choose, and have their choice cooked in a specified way.

“A middle-aged woman was peeling a water snake by the cage. With its head chopped off, the snake was still twitching in a wooden basin, but in a couple of minutes, a coil of white meat would be steamed in a brown earthware pot. …

“In Guangzhou, Chen had heard, there was nothing with four legs that people had not found a way to turn into a delicacy. And he was witnessing such a miracle: Omelet with river clams, meatballs of four happiness, fried rice field eel, peeled shrimp in tomato containers, eight-treasure rice, shark’s fin soup, a whole turtle with brown sauce, and bean curd stuffed with crabmeat.

“’Just a few simple dishes, sidestreet cooking,’ Ouyang said, raising his chopsticks, and shaking his head in apology.” (pages 261-262)

So you see. It’s not Joe Leaphorn’s wife’s Indian style stew. It’s not the savory offerings of Madame Maigret. It’s not the mannered Boston food of Robert Parker’s Spenser. An entirely special range of culinary details animate this very readable and enjoyable book. These details heighten the suspense, never detracting from the building tension over the detective’s case. The examples I’ve given – and many others -- help us understand the social conflicts and political atmosphere created by the author.