Civilization?

More and more Halloween displays in my neighborhood. Coming soon: another post dedicated to them.

Halloween critters for Eileen.

A Beautifully Illustrated Cookbook

José Andrés: Zaytinya.
I haven’t tried many recipes yet, but I hope I will do more.
I have enjoyed dining at the author’s restaurants in Washington, DC.

Fattoush salad from Zaytinya. Tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese, croutons, radishes, bell peppers,
red onions, and herbs from our garden. Olive oil, pomegranate, and lemon dressing. (I omitted sumac because I didn’t have any.)

In 2023: our family at one of the Andres restaurants in 
Washington DC.

Two Historical Novels

I originally reviewed this book by John Shen. Yen Nee and SJ Rozan last year:
https://maefood.blogspot.com/2024/07/two-exotic-mystery-tales.html
Reading next: a newly-published sequel about the same characters.

Next book: the sequel, also featuring Judge Dee.
The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and S.J.Rozan.

A Challenging Theory of Prehistory and Civilization

Luke Kemp: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.
There are so many theories of prehistory! I haven’t finished this book yet.

The early chapters of this book summarize the emergence of violence and war in human societies, which in hunter-gatherer times had tended to be very egalitarian and peaceful. I found this fascinating. Here are a couple of passages that capture the author’s ideas about the disadvantages of civilization:

“In Europe, there are no signs of war during the Palaeolithic. Around 9500 BCE, after the entry into the Holocene, evidence of lethal violence begins to become more common. After around 5500 BCE, as agriculture agriculture spreads across Europe, people settle down, and inequality intensifies; clearer indications of warfare, including fortifications, towns surrounded by ditches, and evidence of massacres, all creep upwards. The Near East follows a similar trajectory. The Natufians killed each other at low rates and didn’t conduct war. For thousands of years we find just a few skeletons with fractured skulls and embedded projectiles. Then in the seventh century BCE, perhaps the first fortification in the world – Tell Maghzaliyah in northern Mesopotamia – was constructed near a node of long-distance obsidian trade.” (p. 68)

The author points out that the increasingly dense cities that emerged not only were more violent, but also began to suffer from contagious diseases. He writes:

“Many of the plagues of the world today, such as influenza, measles, mumps, cholera, smallpox, chicken pox, and, of course, Covid-19, are all recent developments from the past ten thousand years. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors never had to endure the throaty cough of influenza or the painful and disfiguring scabs of chicken pox or smallpox, which emerged only with the advent of urbanism and agriculture. These ‘density-dependent’ diseases require intense interaction between humans and animals, something many of the earliest cities provided in abundance. Such diseases also need a sufficiently large population so they don’t burn themselves out by killing all their hosts.” (p. 89)

This is a challengingly-written and rather long book, and I’m planning to continue reading it around 100 pages at a time.

Related book reviewed in 2017

James C. Scott , Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States.
Reviewed here: https://maefood.blogspot.com/2017/10/against-grain-contrary-book.html

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Shared with Deb’s Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz

Two Exotic Mystery Tales

The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995)

This novel from 1955 still reads in a remarkably contemporary way, despite many details that mark it as having been written so long ago. As everyone says, Highsmith’s account of the remorseless interior thoughts of the con man and murderer Thomas Ripley is a tour-de-force in the creation of a thriller. I totally enjoyed reading it, and I admired the subtlety of the other characters as well. 

When the book begins, Ripley had already broken the law in some unspecified way. The plot begins when the father of a vague acquaintance inquires if Ripley has any information about his son, who has inherited a regular income, and thus can afford to live in a beautiful (fictitious) Italian seaside village. The son, he makes clear, has no desire to return to the US, but Ripley manipulates the father to pay him to go to Europe to convince his son, Dickie Greenleaf, to return home. 

Ripley hates the Americans that he meets in Europe: he feels that his peers -- or those who should be his peers -- have all the advantages because of their money, and they treat him that way. Ripley (as all the reviewers say so this isn't a spoiler) realizes that he is the same size, has similar skin and hair color, and very much resembles Dickie, whom he has become very close to. He plots the murder and kills Dickie in a very dramatic way and assumes his identity with great pleasure and cunning. Of course, as he gets deeper and deeper into this deception, a complicated psychological thriller unrolls.

I have always remembered seeing the French/Italian film Purple Noon, which is based on the novel. The vivid scenes on the Italian coast, the deep blue of the Mediterranean, and the dramatic murder scene and its aftermath made an indelible impression, as did the ending of the film. After all these years reading about Patricia Highsmith and later film versions, I finally decided to read the book. 

Purple Noon: Film Version, 1960

I have an amazingly complete memory of this film, which I saw when it had recently been released.

Directed by René Clément
Starring Alain Delon, Marie Laforêt, Maurice Ronet, Erno Crisa
Screenplay by Clément and Paul Gégauff

“As the sun beats down on a boat in the Mediterranean, two men loll back: scapegrace playboy Maurice Ronet and hanger-on Alain Delon (“My perfect Ripley” – Patricia Highsmith), sent by Ronet’s dad to bring him back. Which one’s going to leave that boat alive? And can he get away with pretending to be the other man? Delon’s star-making thriller smash, adapted from Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

Purple Noon, a French/Italian production, was the first of many adaptations of Ripley to the screen — the most recent is a current Netflix series. I have not seen any of these, though I’m tempted to check them out.

The Murder of Mr. Ma

The Murder of Mr. Ma (published April, 2024)

 

Judge Dee was a famous detective in China in the seventh century, and many mystery lovers like me are familiar with his exploits thanks to a series of novels by a Dutch mystery writer named Robert van Gulik. Judge Dee has been reincarnated into the twentieth century in this recent novel by seasoned mystery writer SJ Rozan, collaborating with novice writer John Shen Yen Nee, a publisher and media producer. SJ Rozan is the author of 20 books, especially a series about a woman detective named Lydia Chin and Lydia’s partner Bill Smith — I’ve read several of them.

It’s 1924 in London, as The Murder of Mr. Ma begins.  A Chinese professor named Lao She has the challenging job of making university students appreciate Chinese language, history, culture, and literature. In reality, a Chinese professor and author by that name actually did live in London in 1924. In fiction, he is the narrator of a very suspenseful and violent mystery story, and he quickly meets the updated version of Judge Dee.

The most memorable feature of The Murder of Mr. Ma is incessant hand-to-hand fighting, using Chinese martial arts. Reincarnated into the twentieth century, Judge Dee changes from a rather staid figure to an amazing street fighter, who propels himself along the roof tops and swings from lampposts, from stair railings, and even from chandeliers. Wearing a kind of superman disguise, he fights multiple thugs at once, knocking them out with sweeping blows from his skilled hands and feet. You would think you are reading a film script (maybe you are).

The Murder of Mr. Ma has a point to make beyond the usual mystery story: it is very much about the lack of respect for Chinese people and their culture shown by the Londoners in the story. The indignation of Professor Lao She is expressed in a variety of ways throughout the novel. In addition, the authors introduced  two very real historic figures into the novel, depicting both of them as friends of Judge Dee. The first of these is Bertrand Russell, the mathematician, philosopher, and author of a book titled The Problem of China, which attempted to overcome the prejudice and disregard for China of that era. The second historic person who appears in the novel is the poet Ezra Pound, who admired Chinese culture and published translations of Chinese poetry. Lao She says of Pound: “In truth I found Pound’s translations of classical Chinese poetry took rather too many liberties, but the man was inarguably a great poet in his native tongue.” (p. 72)

While I found the never-ending fight scenes a bit much, I generally liked this novel for its unusual cast of characters, its very good plot, and the many scenes in Chinese restaurants, where the food on offer seemed very much like the menu in a current Chinese restaurant now, 100 years later. In fact, some of the dishes were the same ones that Lydia Chin and Bill Smith eat in the frequent restaurant scened in SJ Rozan’s earlier books. Would these same dishes have appeared at the very few London Chinese restaurants in 1924? I don’t know but I don’t have a problem with any of this — it’s good reading! 

Review © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Paris in July for the French film

June Food Stories in My Life

Food in Film and Fiction

Pixar’s “Bao”

A fun kitchen movie we watched this month: “Bao,” made by Pixar in 2018.

Bao, of course, are Chinese steamed buns — super delicious!

These bao are from a small lunch place downtown where they also show the movie over and over!
I’ve mentioned this restaurant several times, and it’s quite a favorite. Bao and a coke: perfect!

In the movie one of the bao turns into a living human-like creature.

Sherlock Holmes’s Breakfast

From Neil Gaiman’s Sherlock Holmes monster tale.

From a Murakami Tale

A mysterious business owner’s dinner in “Birthday Girl” one of the Murakami Manga.

Chinese Food from The Murder of Mr. Ma

A recent crime novel by co-authors SJ Rozan and John Shen Yen Nee features several Chinese inhabitants of 1924 London, including a reborn version of the ancient Chinese detective Judge Dee. They eat well, and I wished I could join them; for example:

“Dee and Jimmy Fingers contentedly devoured the spring rolls with copious amounts of hot mustard and, following those, a plate of steamed pork buns. The turnip cake and pan-fried noodles had arrived together … .Dee ordered a dish of clay-pot rice with sausage.”

Sweet treats from Madame Bovary

What were sweets like in France in the 1850s? The Bovary family received the following gift:

“Six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy … .”

Explanation:

• Racahout was a paste made from acorns and sugar, and used to make a hot drink or a porridge. 
• Jujubes are a fruit, also called red dates (not related to normal dates) — a candy made from this fruit had been invented in the 18th century. The modern candy called Jujubes does not contain this fruit.
• Marshmallows back then were made from a gelatinous substance produced by the plant called marsh mallow. The recipe for modern marshmallows made from sugar and artificial (or animal) gelatin is an imitation of this natural plant gelatin.

Fairy wine from Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries

“Like the food, the wine smelled lovely, of sugared apples and cloves, but it slid eerily within the ice, more like oil than wine.”

From Our Own Kitchen this Month

Len did most of the cooking this month. This swordfish was a really delicious dish!

A Julia Child recipe: Gratin Savoyard, or potatoes cooked in stock and topped with cheese.

We worked together on this recipe, which was tasty. We chose it because we had the ingredients on hand:
pork, green lentils, onions, carrots, and tomatoes with some interesting spices.

Of the dishes depicted here, this is the only one that I cooked.

Food Elsewhere

At Sweetwaters’ Cafe. An espresso with a classic donut.

Ice cream at the Dexter Creamery.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander

Shared with Sherry’s In My Kitchen and  Elizabeth’s Tea Party.

Three Girl Detectives

Vintage Nancy Drew

My first detective was —naturally — Nancy Drew.  The everlasting girl sleuth made her first appearance in 1930. Nancy Drew books kept being updated for generation after generation of readers, and eventually for film and TV watchers. At age 10 or 11, on summer days, I could walk to the nearby library, check out my max of three Nancy Drew mysteries (disapproved by the librarians), read them in a day or so, and go back for more.

Over the years, I’ve read lots of  mysteries of various kinds that featured both men and women detectives. Or sleuths, as Carolyn Keene, fictitious author of Nancy Drew would have it. So much has been written about Nancy Drew and her influence that I have nothing to add here, except that I've been thinking about girl detectives because my current reading has featured a couple of 1990s female detectives, Aimee Leduc and Lydia Chin.

The novels I read are the creations of authors Cara Black and S.J. Rozen. Black's Aimee is a private investigator in Paris. Rozan's Lydia investigates in New York, with a focus on Chinatown. Both of these characters are highly intelligent, strong, young, good looking, brave, and resourceful. I have a feeling that their invincible and unflappable personalities are particularly representative of the ideals of the 1990s, though both authors have continued to write many more novels featuring these detectives. Their abilities defy the imagination: they are just too perfect!

Murder in the Marais by
Cara Black (published 1997,
set in 1993.

While I've read several of the Lydia Chin novels in the past, and posted reviews of several of them, Aimee Leduc is new to me: she's a favorite of my friend Mary, who recommended them and loaned them to me. In the first novel of the series, Murder in the Marais, Aimee is depicted as a real superwoman, able to cope with events that would presumably defeat anyone else, and able to cope with the threats that occur in this suspenseful tale.

Aimee uses ingenious and convincing disguises for every occasion. She has a huge wardrobe of remarkable haute couture clothing, as well as special-purpose clothes for slumming and other situations. Mostly these come from thrift shops where she makes incredible finds from famous Paris designers. However, on one occasion she simply stole an entire outfit from a factory. It's ok: she had to get new clothes in order to escape a pursuer.

Aimee's brilliance includes a range of computer skills appropriate for the novel's 1993 setting. Using equipment that's now long obsolete, she can hack into any government or industry computer and find out what she needs to know: often while fighting off bad guys. Her various confrontations with dangerous violent men show her to be intrepid -- including shooting the worst of them off a roof when he was shooting at her with a night-vision weapon.

Witnessing deaths or finding bodies doesn't cause her to lose her calm demeanor. She effortlessly navigates the streets, metro, and sewers of Paris. Above all, Aimee knows where to find the most delicious onion soup, hot apple tart, and good coffee in Paris. What a remarkable woman!

Mandarin Plaid by
S.J. Rozan (1997)

S.J. Rozan's Lydia Chin is a Chinese American, a child of immigrants. She lives with her mother -- who would prefer a more submissive and conventional behavior of her daughter. In Mandarin Plaid, the second in the series, Lydia uses her knowledge of Chinese language, immigrants, and diverse customs in her work as a private eye, partnering with a conventional detective named Bill Smith. Like Aimee, Lydia has remarkable computer skills (appropriate for her time). She also has an uncanny ability to judge character and guess people's motives or weaknesses. She's also similarly capable of staying cool while threats and dangers lurk all over New York.

Although Lydia's wardrobe isn't as versatile or stylish as that of Aimee in Paris, she thinks hard about dressing to fit into a variety of low-life bars, trendy restaurants, and other settings where her detective duties take her. She uses Asian martial arts in hand-to-hand fighting with the bad guys -- her gun comes in handy as well. She works out at a dojo to keep in shape mentally and physically:

"Practicing form, repeating the traditional moves in their prescribed combinations, again, again, again, with no involvement with anyone else, nothing but the relentless, exhausting effort to perfect yourself: that helped." (p. 173).

Food, especially the most appealing foods of Chinatown, is often on Lydia's mind. She stops for tea often, and enjoys several specific types. She's also a helpful shopper for her mother: before going out detecting one morning, she has to do some marketing:

"Water spinach, in Chinatown on a bright weekday morning, is not hard to find. Fruit and vegetable sellers weight their sidewalk stands down with shiny oranges and ugly misshapen jackfruit, crowded beside bundles of foot-long beans as thin as a shoelace and surrounded by bunches of deep green leaves, some rounded, some serrated, all glistening with water sprinkled enthusiastically over them by the sharp-eyed merchants and their fresh-off-the-boat assistants." (p. 84).

At an up and coming trendy Chinese restaurant (remember, this is the early 1990s!), she ordered "a platter of sizzling oysters in a garlic and scallion sauce. ... I tasted them. They were wonderful, something bitter in the sauce setting off the richness of the oysters perfectly." For her second course: "a whole perch, steamed and glistening in a ginger-scallion sauce, topped with delicate strands of carrot, red pepper, and bean thread. With it came a platter of watercress sauteed with garlic, and a large covered bowl of fragrant rice." (p. 141-143).

These days, the library isn't a place I'm going (in fact, I don't think it's open, only delivering books for pre-arranged pick-up). Borrowing books from a friend like Mary is exceptional. E-books are my mainstay! But lazy reading about girl sleuths is still a great way to spend a hot summer afternoon.

This review post © 2020 by mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com. 

If you see this at another blog, it's been pirated!

Current Books, Airplane Books

Again, I don't have time to write complete reviews even of books I enjoyed. However, here are my three most recently completed reading projects:

An early painting by Pissarro, before he
became firmly an Impressionist.

Alice Hoffman, The Marriage of Opposites, is historical fiction about the parents of Camille Pissarro, one of my favorite painters. His mother was born in the Caribbean island of St. Thomas in the 1790s, into a family of Jews from France (who had of course earlier been expelled in previous centuries from Spain and Portugal). Pissarro's father was born in France into a similar community. The love story of the parents, whose marriage was not approved by the strict rules of their local community, is a central part of the book. The artistic life of Camille Pissarro is presented in less detail.

By making up a number of fictitious characters that don't appear in the historical record, the author turns this into a nice novel, almost a romance. I suspect she used the artist's paintings like the one at right as inspiration for her inventions.

I'm fascinated by the historic time and place featured in the book, but a bit skeptical about the details of the author's research. Some of the descriptions of food and of Jewish practice seemed to me to perhaps be based on modern Caribbean foodways and religious traditions, not the result of thorough research. I may be wrong, and I may do some of my own research.

Peter Robinson's Inspector Graves is a nice British policeman like the ones on PBS Masterpiece, and his book Innocent Graves is a nice British police procedural with grisly victims' bodies, much suspense, several reversals of police hypotheses, a dramatic trial, and a satisfying conclusion. Great beach read! A few good police meals! Lots more books in the series!

S.J.Rozan's The Shanghai Moon is just as good as her three other books that I've read and reported at greater length. Her combination of setting in the New York Jewish community and New York Chinatown with background in the World War II Shanghai ghetto (where around 20,000 European Jews were saved from the Nazis) is really great. I know this history and I think it's very well represented here. Rozan devotes the usual excellent attention to what the detectives Lydia Chin and Bill Smith were eating and what it shows about their character and relationship.

And coming soon:

Next on my list -- this collection of essays about the Black community of the USA.

Reading on the Beach

Poipu Beach, just across the street from the apartment where we're staying.  

This is the third novel I've read by
S.J. Rozan

 Yesterday we sat on the beach all day. Today I'm going to do more or less the same while Len goes diving. Yesterday's reading was China Trade, a detective novel by S.J.Rozan, set in Chinatown, New York City. Perfect beach reading. Today I have a police procedural set in England. Probably also perfect for the beach.

I love the way that Rozan, in the first-person narrative spoken by private investigator Lydia Chin, uses food to create a character sketch of the person who is eating or serving it. Here are some examples I really liked. First, consider this scene where Lydia's partner Bill Smith brings her a box of cookies from an Italian bakery:

"'Cookies?' I brightened, led the way into my office. 

"'White-trash medicine,' he said, settling on the guest chair. "'Eat sugar, you’ll feel better.' 

"In the box were miniature Italian pastries: tiny cannoli in three flavors, silver-dollar-sized cheesecakes, thumbprint cookies with red and green cherries on them. My mouth started to water; lunch had been years ago." (Kindle Locations 1685-1688)

As they much the cookies, they discuss the case.

"I pulled the chewy green cherry off a cookie. 

"'Of course, there may not be anything sinister about this at all. Nobody ever said they didn’t know each other.'" (Kindle Locations 1706-1707)

Or Bill eating a burger while they consider various possible strategies:

"The waitress brought his burger, thick and juicy-looking, smelling of the grill. I had that after-class hunger, too. 

"'A guy I know,' Bill began, fiddling with onions and ketchup, salt and pepper, 'who, of course, doesn’t handle stolen art himself, but knows a guy who might know a guy—'" 

"'Of course,' I agreed. I peeled the pulp out of a wedge of lime. 

"'This guy says that he hasn’t— that is, as far as he knows, his friends haven’t— been offered anything that might come from the Blair collection. But if he were— well, of course, now he’d call me, since he knows I’m looking and he’s eager to cooperate. ...' 

"'He sounds like a pain in the neck, this guy,' I interrupted, as Bill bit into the assembled burger. It was dark red inside, just this side of purple. That’s the way I like it best. 

"'Just a little cautious,' Bill said. 'He’s been in business a long time.'" (Kindle Locations 342-337)

 Of course, there's also a scene in a Chinese restaurant:

"This place— Lucky Seafood— was small, unatmospheric, and sort of a dive, but still at least half the customers were white. Lawyers from the courts and city workers from the area around City Hall, which both border Chinatown, wielded chopsticks with practiced ease, talking, eating, and thrusting the sticks at each other to emphasize important points. They passed the platters of breaded pork and jade scallops so everyone could scoop some onto their plates. The tables of Chinese ate the way I did, reaching across each other onto the stationary platters for the morsels they wanted, dropping pieces into their rice bowls so the rice could soak up the sauce. The lawyers and city workers didn’t eat out of the rice bowls, but scooped rice, also, out onto their plates."(Kindle Locations 1344-1349).

There's lots more. Lydia's mother cooks for her, Bill and Lydia eat in other places, Bill scrambles some eggs for dinner, and a very proper lady serves them some lunch -- every scene revealing something about the characters that helps the story to proceed. And it's a nicely structured and satisfying detective story as well!

A turtle on Poipu Beach. It's time to go there now!

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.

"Reflecting the Sky"

Hong Kong is full of mysteries. In S.J. Rozan's novel Reflecting the Sky, detective Lydia Chin and her partner Bill Smith arrived from New York and within hours were in the midst of a kidnapping case. Before they had a moment's rest they were chasing perps and clues through the colorful streets, back-alleys, outer islands, temples to local gods, night markets, food stalls, high-rise hotels, luxury apartment buildings, modern shopping centers, seedy waterfront businesses, ferry boats crossing the water, film studios, and old colonial homes. They rode the famous mile-long escalator up the mountain. On Hollywood Road, among the internationally know antique shops, they tried to get information about an international triad (or gang) whose smuggling activities might be part of their case.

Bill and Lydia worked with a Hong Kong police officer who grew up in Alabama. A few times, they ate street food like skewered squid with vegetables or delicious meals in a local restaurant. Other times Lydia put up with instant noodles or other convenience food in the police station.

I loved every suspenseful minute of this adventure. Above all, I was captivated because I was in Hong Kong myself at about the same time. One Sunday, we walked into the financial center with its ultra modern sky scrapers and were astonished to find thousands of Filipino nannies sitting on benches, blankets, and folding chairs in groups, talking, eating, giving each other manicures, dancing, listening to boom boxes, and otherwise socializing. In the story, Lydia Chin and Bill Smith visited exactly this meeting place to search for a possible connection in their kidnapping case -- Bill was fortunately fluent in Tagalog so he could get information.

The description of these women, in Lydia's first-person account, made me think of our walk:

And mostly, they were eating. The aromas of roast meats and sauces pungent with unfamiliar spices made my mouth water, and as I watched plastic containers being popped open and paper plates being passed I wondered how many breakfasts I could really eat. (p. 156)

Even the plastic boxes of food being shared by these women on their day off reminded me of my own experience. I visited many of the other locations described in the story, especially a couple of out islands. Here are my photos from a fishing village at the far side of the territory:




Fruit and vegetables at Stanley Market:


For my review of another Lydia Chin mystery see "A Bitter Feast".

"A Bitter Feast"

The author of A Bitter Feast, S.J.Rozan, spoke at the Jewish Book Festival this week about her latest book. I asked if any of her books had a food theme, and she recommended A Bitter Feast, starring her detective Lydia Chin, American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants.

Chin, a private investigator in her native China Town in New York, begins with a case involving attempts to unionize workers in a palace-like Chinese restaurant, the Dragon Garden. As the plot becomes more and more complicated, Chin eats elegant Chinese food, American deli food, home-cooked meals made by her mother, and appropriate tea snacks supplied by the various shady community figures that she interviews. She also shops for food to help her mother, who is aging.

For a while, Chin disguises herself as an immigrant and works as a Dim Sum Lady pushing carts of food around the Dragon Garden. She describes the preparations: "the chefs' assistants loaded us up with dumpling-filled bamboo steamers and plates of turnip cakes and upside-down glass bowls holding mounds of eight-treasure rice." (p. 123)

For the final scene, she plans to entrap the man suspected of various crimes. He agrees to meet her at another restaurant, so she arranges a six-course Chinese banquet, starting with a cold platter and ending with fried bananas (p. 270) The day of the banquet, the restaurant owner assures her that he's obtained the freshest of sea bass. Before Chin and her quarry get to taste any of it, an unexpected ambush and shootout bring the investigation to a close.

Finally, having solved her case, she accepts an invitation from her investigator-partner Bill Smith: he cooks her an American meal. The last sentences of the book: "The tomato-glazed meat loaf filled the room with savory scents. Bill began tossing the salad with a dark dressing full of herbs, and I started to look forward to dinner." (p. 308)

A very foodie book indeed. Beginning to read it this morning helped propel me to the Asian market where I shopped this afternoon -- see Reading about Chinese food makes me want some and Chop Suey and Chinese History. Rozan's new book also sounded very interesting, and I plan to read it eventually.