Customer Reviews

Roux Morgue

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

 

 

As an audio critic, I look for a few things when I review an audio presentation. I ask myself such questions like Is the audio production a faithful version of the book? Is the talent on the audio entertaining the audience or is he or she just reading the story?

Christine Williams narrated this unabridged recording with such a lemon zest. The mystery is written in first person. Her narration fills your ears with the humor the book has and sweet sound of mystery. It is like a cake out of the over for your ears. So moist and faithful to the text, but filled with a lightness and texture

Chef Mary Ryan returns to her roots, the cooking school (Ecole D'epicure) that trainned her as a chef. However this time , she is an instructor. However, there is a surf and turf (dont you love these food images) war between old style chefs and their modern day counterparts..and you thought gang wars were bad, Mary is the thick of it.

When one of the Instructor chef's dies of a shelfish reaction but there is no shell fish on the menu..our cooking Nancy Drew starts turning up the detective heat. Stir in a few leads and this mystery is cooking with gas burners on high.


There are a few smelly red herring afoot as the audio listener is treated to a prize winner of a mystery, narrated with a certain tartness. Claire M Johnson's culinary mystery is a special desert for those fans who like a good mystery.

And for those who liked everything wrapped up at the end. This mystery does that with a flair for presentation. The listener is never left with a sour taste in their ears after you have enjoyed this audio meal.

One can wish Blackstone audio can get Christine Williams to narrate the first Mary Ryan mystery and all future novels. This spoken word novel is like an Iron Chef match...and this mystery just grilled Bobby Flay.

So Until Rachel Ray or Paula Dean writes mysteries, go get this production and start cooking!

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD

I enjoyed Claire's Beat until Stiff... I didn't realize there was another book written before this.
Not really about restuarants cooking or recipes...but inter tangled murders... I can see this as
a continuing series with characters and relationships growing.....
Hope there are more to come in 2012....

A really likable protagonist, light touch with the writing and good dialog with appropriate voices from each of the characters, who were more than just cardboard stereotypes. The mystery was not obvious halfway through, like some others I've read recently. I knew nothing of the high-end restaurant business but really enjoyed this peek into it, especially with a guide like Mary Ryan (and the author).

I hate to have to say it, this is an old-fashioned, properly edited, pleasure to read. This is unlike several books I've read lately, full of terrible grammar, the half-baked sentences, tense changes, POV changes and awful misspellings throughout.

Roux Morgue is definitely worth reading: it's not pretending to be anything but a good mystery, and it's is very satisfying.

Mary Ryan's Roux Morgue mediocre. Main character whiny and annoying. More gourmet cooking details might have made dull story more interesting. Sorry

After nearly ten years of silence from pastry chef Mary Ryan, she springs back to life in the mystery, Roux Morgue, by Claire M. Johnson. Finding the perfect job for an unemployed chef in San Francisco is never easy, but when you've recently been involved with finding murdered bodies, nobody wants to talk to you. When Chef Mary is offered a teaching position at her alma mater, she thinks her financial worries are over and life has taken a turn for the better.

She should have known better. On her first day back to work, she is urged to take sides in a war between old school and modern school chefs when all she wants to do is keep her head down and cook. Then she's surprised by finding her ex-husband's married best friend in her class. Tensions are high everywhere, even with people she thought were her friends. When one of those friends finds murder on the menu and ends up dead, Chef Mary is forced to step in and lend a hand.

Mixed together in this recipe for death are mobsters, high class European chefs with tempers to match, high priced lawyers, former almost-lovers (yes, plural) and hostile friends. Throw in a few sizzling hormones, the pressures of teaching culinary classes to the clueless, mystery fiancés, and sex scandals. Next, stir everything up with Chef Mary's sleuthing skills, and the result is a witty read with quite a few tasty cooking tips thrown in to leave you hungering for more.

by Rhonda Esakov
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

In San Francisco when pastry chef Mary Ryan joined the faculty at her alumni École d'Epicure she was unaware of the internal cold war between the "dinosaurs" and the "young brats". However she plans to avoid the politics by staying neutral as she assumes that should prove easy to achieve.

To her chagrin SFPD Homicide Inspector O'Connor is one of her students. He insists he is on medical leave due to stress, but she fears her stress will go to the sky as she and the married partner of her ex-husband Jim are attracted to one another. Tension escalates between the two cooking blocs as hostilities turn feral when a water fight ignites. Both armed camps demand Mary choose. However, things turn ugly when Chef Allison dies suspiciously; another death follows. Putting on her Nancy Drew hat, Mary investigates death by food poisoning and other culinary murder techniques.

It has been quite a while since Mary starred in BEAT UNTIL STIFF, but the wait for her second culinary cozy is well worth it. The story line is a lighthearted amusing romp as readers obtain a look at the politics of cooking. Mary is a wonderful heroine who wants to stay out of the holy war, but each side insists she commits to them or she belongs to the enemy camp. Fans will appreciate Claire M. Johnson's superb war of the chefs' murder mystery.

Harriet Klausner

I didn't care much for the writing in the first book (poor grammar generally, dangling modifiers everywhere) but I thought that after such a long break, maybe the author had gotten better. No such luck. In the space of a few pages the writing was so egregious that I had to just stop. In the Preface she says "My father died in the middle of writing this book." Really? Your FATHER wrote the book? In the second paragraph of the book she says that a plate "couldn't have been cleaner than if it had been through an autoclave." The "than" should not be there--it makes no sense. There are too many books out there for me to waste my time reading one that constantly takes me out of the story with bad writing.