Book Blast: MEAN CUISINE by Wendy W. Webb

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Wendy will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Beluga Stein is taking a cooking class and it's a real killer. This time she's traded her signature loud muumuus for ill-fitting chef attire, including a toque the size of her ego.

A well-liked chef is found dead and it's up to Beluga and her feline familiar, Planchette, to investigate. There's no recipe to follow, only the hope that her erratic psychic ability will hit the spot. Is a supernatural entity stirring up trouble, or something far more dangerous?

Beluga and Planchette can't stand the heat, but there's no way out of this kitchen while murder is the main dish.

Read an Excerpt

Beluga Stein’s Diary

Such a day.

And while Chef Pernod tried mightily to restore order with an impromptu lecture on the differences between Grande, Classic and Nouvelle cuisines, I’m afraid the distinctions were lost when the frozen body was wheeled past us to the waiting ambulance.

The sight of such a spectacle took a toll on the chef as well, I should add. Fortunately for me there was no mention of Planchette in the kitchen, but for the rest of us the chef’s well-practiced lecture took a sudden nosedive into a stream-of-consciousness series of French words. I think I heard her say that a traditional kitchen brigade had positions with names sounding something like “poisoner,” which is rather ominous if you ask me, and “chefs who party,” which might warrant further investigation if things start to get dull. Or one finds herself in immediate need of hors d’oeuvres and a tropical cocktail.

~~~

Review: Cooking school might be the way to go even if you couldn’t even cook an egg. That was one place psychic detective Beluga knew would be free of murder.

I enjoyed the humorous and witty quips. Beluga was a rotund, klutzy, and quirky character wish snarky charm, a hearty appetite, and solid smarts. The cooking school also seemed to have its oddball characters including a slew of tater-tots and a drill-sergeant chef. The last thing anyone expected during the tour was to find a dead body in the freezer.

Right away, Beluga’s inquiring mind starts questioning the case and lures the reader into it. What happened to the dead chef?

The reader will surely enjoy following Beluga and Tanya’s wacky and harebrained antics. At some point, it seemed like that was all we were doing however. The whole time you’re just following two crazy broads. It didn’t seem like we were focusing too much on solving the mystery. Perhaps I was just too used to following a certain pattern in a traditional cozy mystery. Perhaps a paranormal mystery follows an eclectic path. I liked the lightness and the humor, but, as far as a mystery goes, I thought that could’ve been better and more focused.

A fairly nice read.

Rating: 3 stars

About the Author:

Wendy W Webb (aka one of the many Wendy Webbs) has published dark fantasy short stories and novels, co-edited anthologies, and has had productions of stage and radio plays. After a hiatus as a doctoral student of emergency management and as a disaster responder, she welcomed the return to fiction with The Wild Rose Press writing the gothic Widow’s Walk, and two updated books in the Beluga Stein supernatural-humor-murder mystery series, Bee Movie and Mean Cuisine. Sunbury Press under the Milford House imprint published the paranormal, travel, “memoir,” Eye of the Gargoyle. She adores her husband; two dogs, one of which turns on iTunes whenever Wendy leaves her office; dry red wine; theatre; and travel as long as she doesn’t see anymore ghosts!

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mean-cuisine-wendy-w-webb/1007879485
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Mean-Cuisine-Beluga-Stein-Mystery/dp/1509259279