Little Indiscretions: A Delectable Mystery [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Carmen Posadas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2, 2004

A runaway international bestseller and winner of Spain's top literary prize, Little Indiscretions is both an ingenious whodunit and a sparkling social satire. Business is slow for Nestor Chaffino, pastry chef to the rich and famous, until he's invited to cater a party in a villa on the Costa del Sol. When he is found frozen to death in a walk-in freezer, all the party guests become suspects. Not since Nick and Nora Charles's last cocktail party has such a merry band of mischief makers convened.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The death of a manipulative, mischievous pastry chef sets the stage for this insouciant whodunit, with its humorous and philosophical narrative voice, from Spanish author Posadas. When the frozen body of Nestor Chaffino, who had been hired to cater a party at art dealer Ernesto Teldi's Costa del Sol summer house, turns up in the kitchen "cool room" the morning of the party, the evidence, including a nonworking alarm button in the freezer, points to murder. And why was the victim clutching a scrap of paper with a fragmentary list of dessert recipes? In a series of flashbacks, the author adroitly lays out the "little indiscretions," adulterous and otherwise (recorded by the conniving Nestor in his moleskin notebook), that bind Ernesto, his wife, a na‹ve young Czech kitchen helper, a renegade waitress, a widowed judge and various other distinctive and unusual characters. The action proceeds with all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy to a denouement both hilarious and horrifying. FYI: Little Indiscretions won the 1998 Planeta Prize. Born in Uruguay, the author now lives in Madrid.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

This elegant mystery, which won the 1998 Planeta Prize in Barcelona, has as many secrets as one of the murder victim's chocolate fondants. Nestor, a pastry chef with a penchant for other people's hidden desires, freezes to death in the walk-in cold room where he has just catered a party for Ernesto Teldi, an art collector on the Costa del Sol. Ernesto, his wife, Adela, Nestor's twisted young employee Chloe, and Serafin, an old friend of the Teldis, all have secrets that Nestor has discovered. His appearance at the party causes much fear and loathing--but who locks that freezer door? Serpentine sentences about childhood memories and furtive desires wrestle with verbal flourishes as light as a random caress. Utterly European in its aristocratic air, and great fun to read even though Nestor's recipes are tantalizingly incomplete. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 411 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press; 1 edition (January 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786260920
• ISBN-13: 978-0786260928
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,274,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegant, August 31, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Little Indiscretions: A Delectable Mystery (Hardcover)

A prize-winning mystery, Little Indiscretions, is based on the death of Nestor, a pastry chef who dies in a walk-in freezer that someone locks behind him. Why? Because Nestor knew secrets about just about every other character in the book. This is a very elegant, very European, very wonderful book. Recipes are included, but just as a good book doesn't answer all of a reader's questions, neither are the recipes complete enough to permit duplication. Damn.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, original, delightful, November 30, 2005

By 

Jeanevan (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Indiscretions: A Delectable Mystery (Paperback)

This little gem is about as far from the cliche "spunky single mom investigates murder for no fathomable reason and falls in love with the cop, recipes/crosswords/knitting patterns included" fluffy frothy books as you can get. Not only is there no spunky single mom - there's no cop. Nor are there recipes. There's a lot of talk about recipes - but that's all.

Nevertheless, it passes all the tests. It's got the "Gee what happens next?" factor that keeps you turning pages. It has lovely writing (my compliments to the translator). It has non-cardboard characters whose lives are woven together in unexpected but believable ways. And if the ending isn't a tidy tying up with a big pink bow and a chocolate mint, well, life is like that.

A very unusual, elegant, highly entertaining, well crafted, funny, heart-tugging and shocking novel. Just wonderful.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars no point, August 2, 2005

By 

boredom - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Indiscretions: A Delectable Mystery (Paperback)

the book starts with the death of a highly renowned pastry chef. then it goes to describe other characters, not even mentioning the death pf of the pastry chef. the description of the characters are very good, but they should be after most than 3/4 of the book are spent describing them. the murder isn't even discussed until the last 50 pages. and to me, the murder scenario, seemed like a let down.