A Cookbook Conspiracy

April 22, 2013
In chapter one of Carlisle’s well-plotted seventh bibliophile mystery (after 2012’s Peril in Paperback), book binder Brooklyn Wainwright agrees to repair a handwritten cookbook dated 1774 for her sister, Savannah. Savannah plans to give it to her former boyfriend, celebrity TV chef Baxter Cromwell, at the opening of his new San Francisco restaurant. Baxter originally gave the rare volume to Savannah while they were both students at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris years before. To Savannah’s surprise, the gift upsets Baxter, who excuses himself from the opening festivities. Soon after, Brooklyn discovers Savannah in the kitchen kneeling over Baxter’s body with a bloody knife in her hand. Confident of her sister’s innocence, Brooklyn sets out to find the real killer. She must also locate the now-missing cookbook, which may hold an important clue. Carlisle keeps the suspense high as Brooklyn sleuths her way through a host of chefs and other suspects to the satisfying resolution. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency.

May 1, 2013
A bookbinder once again becomes a magnet for murder. Brooklyn Wainwright, the bookbinder in question, lives in San Francisco with her drop-dead gorgeous boyfriend, Derek, a former British agent who currently does private investigations. Although she's a dreadful cook, Brooklyn's obsessed with food and delighted by a visit from her sister Savannah, a Cordon Bleu chef who owns a vegetarian restaurant in the Sonoma wine country. Savannah's come to ask Brooklyn to repair a 1782 cookbook written by Obedience Green, a young woman who came to the Americas and cooked for a British general. The book is a gift for celebrity chef Baxter Cromwell, who's invited all his buddies from their school days in Paris to the opening of his new restaurant. Brooklyn, who spent a summer living with the group, is included. At the special opening, the book, which Baxter accepts rather tepidly, elicits odd reactions from some of the other chefs. When Baxter is found stabbed to death, Savannah clutching a bloody knife, Brooklyn, whose past has included a number of unwelcome murder investigations (Peril in Paperback, 2012, etc.), enlists Derek to help find the real killer and the vanished cookbook. As it turns out, Baxter's friends all had good reason to loathe him, so Brooklyn has loads of suspects. A second murder only adds urgency to her quest for the truth. Carlisle's eighth Bibliophile mystery provides interesting suspects, a historical puzzle and the usual appended recipes.

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June 1, 2013

Brooklyn Wainwright, a rare books expert, comes to her chef sister's rescue when a rare cookbook disappears during a homicide. Her eighth case (after Peril in Paperback) is the first entry as a hardback.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2013
Brooklyn Wainwright can't cook, but she's an expert bookbinder. Her sister, Savannah, though, is a top chef, with an array of friends, all classmates from Le Cordon Bleu. One of those friends had given Savannah a manuscript of an eighteenth-century receipt book, and now she wants to return it, rebound, as a gift upon the opening of his newest restaurant in San Francisco. Within hours of giving him the cookbook, Savannah finds him dead, stabbed in the restaurant's kitchen, and the cookbook is nowhere to be found. Brooklyn is sure the cookbook is the key to clearing her sister and studies the photocopies she made before undertaking the rebinding and restoration. She shows her security-expert boyfriend, who in turn calls in his MI6 brother, a code expert. While the sleuths are trying to crack the code in the cookbook, the gathered chefs, who cannot leave San Francisco, cook meals for each other, providing Brooklyn ample opportunity to probe their friendshipsand enmities. The descriptions of the meals are luscious, and the history of the book intriguing, as befits the seventh in the series. Includes recipes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)