Death of a Mystery Guest

Charlie Hunter does not like Christmas, especially the lead into it — cooking endless servings of Christmas dinner. So when she is asked by Graeme Strickland, Michelin-starred chef, egomaniac and friend, to help out in a hotel restaurant in Edinburgh's New Town, for a fortnight, she accepts with alacrity. The Head Chef, David Jenkins, is a very old friend of Strickland's, and the job entails covering temporarily for a sous chef position, while Strickland provides cover for Charlie, gratis, in the Old Forge Café.She is scheduled to be there for a fortnight. But Charlie arrives in Edinburgh just in time to discover David Jenkins being stretchered out. An autopsy reveals the Chef has been poisoned with mushrooms. Was it an accident or a murder attempt? It looks like Charlie may be doing a rather different job... 'An irresistibly delicious mix of cooking and murder'Trisha Ashley'Takes two of the world's greatest pleasures - food and mystery writing - and combines them exquisitely. I devoured it!'Thomas Mogford Chef Charlie Hunter's arrival in the beautiful Chilterns is the fulfilment of a long-held dream: to open her own restaurant in an idyllic countryside location. The Old Forge sits on the village green (complete with duck pond and flint-faced houses) and seems just the place for the high-quality cooking she wants to be known for. But instead of rural peace and a chance to lick her wounds, Charlie finds something ugly stirring under the chocolate box perfection. When a prominent local builder is found dead in suspicious circumstances, Charlie the outsider becomes a suspect. And the only way to clear her name seems to be to find out who the real killer is. Luckily she has allies: her student waitress, a kitchen porter making up in muscles what he lacks in brain and a briskly efficient clairvoyant. Using all the craft Charlie's learned in kitchens – discipline, timing, preparation and grim determination – she will be as relentless in her quest to bring a murderer to justice as she is in creating the perfect meal.