Customer Reviews

Cooking Up Trouble: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (Angie Amalfi Mysteries)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fun read. Good send-up of New Age charlatans. Humor and chills. Enjoyed "ghost" story.

This is the third book in the Angie Amalfi series and I have loved each of them. This is a wonderful cozy series where the combination of mystery and romance is well balanced. The mystery keeps me guessing to the end and the romance is just steamy enough to keep me coming back, but not so much that it overpowers the mystery. A good read which I highly recommend.

Hated to put it down. Had to read the last couple of chapters over 'cus I read through them so fast to find out what was gonna happen next. It's challenging to find a mystery that has a giggle/zinger. This one was "salted & peppered" to my taste.

If attention to details is what separates excellent mystery authors from good ones, Pence may be doomed to the latter category. I found at least two story line contradictions in this book that were quite distracting as I tried to figure out who done it. It is a fun read with some sensual scenes between our heroine (Angie Amalfi) and her boyfriend thrown in to move the across book love story line along. It wasn't what I was looking for, but others may enjoy it.

The mystery is intriguing here, even if the wrap-up left a little something to be desired. The backstory in this book also shows promise on Pence's part- it certainly adds a more romantic air to this romance/mystery. Unfortunatly, Angie seems contradictory here- sometimes thoughtful, other times jumping to outrageous petty conclusions in Pence's attempt to work some conflict between the lovers. Angie's character I think goes downhill from here- Cooking Most Deadly is the next book.

"'I wouldn't feed this swill to my cat!' Martin Bayman announced... The lentil-soybean cutlets were not a hit." - Quote from Joanne Pence's pen poofing life into her newly green world.

This 3rd book-in-series started out with a (metaphoric) bang, highlighting the captivating dud of soybean cutlets saute-tested for the menu of an out-of-the-way Inn to die in. I'm hopeless when it comes to taste-bud-uptake-inhibitors (like serotonin-uptake-inhibitors for which Prozac did the Pandora's Box thingy?). If you abbreviate this title, CUT, you get a reference to "cutlets." Is synchronicity cooking here? Yeah, but the cutlet was meatless, until Angie waved her wooden-spoon-wand.

Angie's open-minded skepticism of metaphysical gurus was humorously warming, and the setting of the Inn in a Gothically remote, at-risk location was mysteriously inviting. As usual in Pence's repertoire, fictional residents were well-rooted into emotional complexity. I don't know how she does this repeatedly with new and old characters, but many of her plot people have enough comedic appeal to border on being cartoon-ish buffoons, and yet they're fleshed out enough to skip off the pages. As a collective of unique individuals, these guys based in the real world, beyond the edges of phony, overdone, underdone, or irritating.

Getting back to the guru thing, Pence gives us a peek into that metaphysical world, from an angle which would be realistic even from a skeptic's perspective. Yet the overview's warm enough and into the gestalt enough that readers should be able to feel the ease with which an intelligent adult could slip whole (bloodless) hog into the ethereal draw of the ozone world of fruits & veggies, a world which attempts to expose the gateway to wherever we all go when our hearts stop for good.

Does any one of us not have personal agendas? Of course the game is to work harder to hide them in the sweet worlds in which the thing is to be a selfless, spiritual-sensitive, and to have no agenda (though bannanas are usually allowed). Pence is no fool when it comes to human nature, and each of the new set of characters in this ghost & green setting exposed a different angle on those agendas within a gutsy-fleshy personality mix.

We have Greg, I mean Running Spirit, and his confused, waif of a wife, Patsy. We have Moira, a strong "wise" woman who, refreshingly, doesn't try too hard to hide her agenda in a pile of raw sugar. We have Chelsea who grows a few needed backbone links. Then, of course there's Reginald Vane. Now he's a tall, dark, and shy, but not too dim Original, as they say in London-based Historic Romance novels.

What I love about these characterizations of boney but off-beat personas is Pence's generous need to hand out realistic redemption on as many pages as possible, after and while spotlighting juicy dark sides with just enough balsamic dimming to prevent the comedy from bubbing the plot out of its heady, roiling stew.

Pence is good. And she's so graceful in balancing dark & light that few would take time to notice the precision of Angie Vs Paavo type nuances as they meld effervescence with caring, each giving the edge needed to avoid stagnation or singular-dimension.

I predict that Pence's Angie series will endure well beyond the limited runs of the variety of cultural bubbles of our times (New Age gurus speaking in all channels, X-files alien DNA conspiracies, traditional ethnic social doings, etc.).

This multifaceted author exposes these time-bound, cultural bubbles with style, class, drama, and lighthearted looks at our gardens of foibles. None of us, not even the titanium cynic, is immune to rooting into one type of pondering or pitfall and calling it sanctuary for a while. Pence opens the doors, windows, and sometimes the roofs of these sanctums, treads gently around the hyper-sensitive spots, and periodically chews on her toes while we laugh with her and at ourselves.

While I allow myself to freely enjoy whatever flavor calls to me at the moment, from beef to beets to borage, I can savor gourmet veggie, and Pence gave a good bite of this here, too.

In the conclusion, munching metaphorically, the savory-spiced Partridge had a pear stuffed stylishly in its mouth, and, while green, orange & gold ground-gems were ultimately elevated with class, no vegetables were spared.

See my Listmania on Pence's Amalfi series; all books in order, with blurbs. Burp.

Bon Appetite in the saucy sense of the word,

Linda G. Shelnutt