Beat Until Stiff
by Claire M. Johnson
Poisoned Pen Press, December 2002
214 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 1590580400
Mary Ryan, pastry chef at the successful American Fare restaurant in San Francisco, has been grieving over her broken marriage to homicide cop, Jim McCreary, for the past two years and working eighteen-hour days in an attempt to forget. Early one morning, Mary arrives at the restaurant to finish up two hundred individual chocolate books--each filled with blood-orange mousse and the names of literary classics piped with white chocolate on each front cover--when she literally stumbles across a body stuffed in a laundry bag. One of her employees has been beaten to death. Mary decides to call 911 rather than her ex-husband but, as luck would have it, her ex-husband's partner, O'Connor, arrives on the scene. The only thing that Mary and O'Connor have in common is a love of cooking and food--they disagree about virtually everything else. As Mary steels herself to face her ex-husband, she is stunned and relieved to learn that he has transferred out of Homicide and into Internal Affairs.
The restaurant closes for a few days for the police investigation. Mary takes the time to evaluate her life for the first time since the divorce. However a phone call from a tearful Teri Baxter, current amour of the restaurant's famous chef, Brent Brown, for advice on how to handle questions from the police, interrupts her reverie. Mary, always cranky, manages to tick Teri off in minutes. When she tries to phone Teri back and no one answers, a repentant and worried Mary heads over to the closed restaurant to find her address so she can make sure she is all right. At the same time, Brent and his wife also sneak into the restaurant to retrieve information off the computer. Mary, hiding under a desk, can't figure out the reason for that--after all, he has access to the computer whenever he is working.
by Claire M. Johnson
Poisoned Pen Press, December 2002
214 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 1590580400
Mary Ryan, pastry chef at the successful American Fare restaurant in San Francisco, has been grieving over her broken marriage to homicide cop, Jim McCreary, for the past two years and working eighteen-hour days in an attempt to forget. Early one morning, Mary arrives at the restaurant to finish up two hundred individual chocolate books--each filled with blood-orange mousse and the names of literary classics piped with white chocolate on each front cover--when she literally stumbles across a body stuffed in a laundry bag. One of her employees has been beaten to death. Mary decides to call 911 rather than her ex-husband but, as luck would have it, her ex-husband's partner, O'Connor, arrives on the scene. The only thing that Mary and O'Connor have in common is a love of cooking and food--they disagree about virtually everything else. As Mary steels herself to face her ex-husband, she is stunned and relieved to learn that he has transferred out of Homicide and into Internal Affairs.
Mary can't figure out a lot of strange things. Juan, the restaurant's maitre d' and normally the epitome of formal courtesy, suddenly loses his temper viciously with a wine deliveryman. The victim's brother, also a restaurant worker, is missing. The victim's widow asks for Mary's help--something bad is going on at the restaurant. Jim is phoning her constantly and Mary no longer answers her phone. O'Connor demands that Mary phone him whenever she leaves her house. Mary suspects she is being followed but O'Connor shrugs her off. The only person that seems to be the same as usual is the restaurant's obnoxious controller, Thom.
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