Customer Reviews

The Food Detective

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Kings Duncombe is a village small enough for everyone to know everyone else's business, or so it seems, and insular enough to turn a blind eye to many transgressions. Josie Welford, the widow of one of Britain's most notorious criminals, hopes to make a fresh start in the village as the licensee of the local pub: the White Hart. Josie is more or less accepted because she has left the White Hart largely unchanged ... for now.

The status quo changes, though, when a former policeman from Josie's past makes an appearance. Nick is now an Inspector for the Food Standards Agency and causes Josie to wonder about the quality and provenance of the meat she is buying. As a consequence, Josie changes meat suppliers and this leads to a series of events which test Josie's determination and seem to turn the village upside down. Who is involved in what, and why?

Josie is perhaps an unlikely but likeable hero. A feisty woman who is 50+, can keep secrets and is fighting a weight problem while maintaining a keen interest in what is going on around her is someone that many readers could relate to. Josie is not perfect and not super human, but she is very observant and highly organised. It took me a few pages to get caught up in this novel, but once I did I read through to the end because I wanted to see how it would all end. Some aspects were predictable and others were not. Put it this way: I'm off to read the second novel to feature Josie Welford. It is called `The Chinese Takeout'.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Josie Welford is a wonderful protagonist: tart, intelligent, realistic, and secretly kind. Her attempt to carve out a place for herself in the backwater of Kings Duncombe turns into a perilous trip through her own past, and triggers a complicated system of entanglements with unlikely people that will certainly shape her future.

Charlaine Harris