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Good books, old friends

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By Kara G. Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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But if you are overwhelmed by your choices, here is one suggestion. I have scientifically determined during the course of my career as a public librarian that book lovers are also food lovers. I know both patrons and librarians whose mouths water equally over the prospect of reading either a mystery novel or a cookbook. Many, I've noticed, have even taken to combining these apparently symbiotic reading interests by indulging in culinary mysteries.

Colorado-based author Diane Mott Davidson is a favorite among the culinary mystery readers. Her latest offering The Main Corpse (Bantam Books, 1996, 337 pages, $21.95), combined with a gourmet or homemade food item, would make the ideal gift for the well-read gourmand on your list.

Davidson's novels (all published by Bantam) follow the crime-solving and cooking adventures of caterer Goldy Bear of Aspen Meadows, Colo. All of them, including Catering to Nobody (1990), Dying for Chocolate (1992), The Cereal Murders (1993), The Last Suppers (1994) and Killer Pancake (1995), are as much cookbooks as they are mystery novels.

Each starts with a menu for an event which Goldy plans to cater and ends with an index to the recipes that have been inserted as the plot unfolds.

Goldy is one of those people who just happens to stumble frequently into webs of murder and intrigue from which she must extricate herself or someone close to her. She narrates each novel in an earthy, matter-of-fact tone and provides the reader with as many details about her cooking and catering experiences as her crime-solving escapades.

Most amateur sleuths in crime novels are flat and formulaic, but Goldy has a personality all her own.

Readers will be endeared to her healthy sense of humor, strong loyalty to her friends and family, and most importantly in making her both a good crime solver and an excellent cook and caterer, her keen attention to details. Each novel has an equally engaging cast of supporting characters.

In The Main Corpse, her detective husband Tom, her 14-year-old son Arch and his unreliable bloodhound Jake, her adolescent catering assistant Macquire Perkins and her eccentric former employer General Bo Farquhar, all get in on the action and lend their own lovable quirks to the reader's overall enjoyment of the novel.

In The Main Corpse, Goldy starts to smell trouble when she caters the reopening of the Eurydice Gold Mine for Prospect Financial Partners.

Tony Royce and Albert Lipscomb, the partners, have convinced investors to put $3.5 million into the mine which they say Lipscomb inherited "choc-a-block with gold ore."

Victoria Lear, Prospect's chief investment officer, whose task was to prepare the Eurydice initial public stock offering, has already died a mysterious death.

But the venture does not raise any real suspicions until Marla Korman, Goldy's best friend and an investor in the mine, questions the reliability of Prospect's assays of the mine's ore in a violent argument with Lipscomb at the mine reopening.

Korman publicly accuses Lipscomb of scamming herself and the other investors, and Lipscomb shortly thereafter proves her right by seemingly absconding with the $3.5 million.

Then Royce, Korman's boyfriend as well as financial advisor, also disappears after a "romantic" fishing trip he has taken with Korman.

After Korman is found by the police with Royce's blood all over her clothes and promptly arrested for his murder, Goldy is forced to determine who is really behind all these mysterious disappearances in order to clear her friend's name.

In the course of revealing and resolving the crime, Goldy pauses several times to share recipes for a variety of gourmet delights, such as Provencal Pizza, Chocoholic Cookies and Tomato-Brie Pie.

Davidson seems to know just how to provide her particular audience with an equal balance between the culinary arts and mystery.

Readers will want to slowly savor the many passages in the novel in which Goldy's succulent cooking and catering experiences are painstakingly described and at the same time race quickly to the novel's end to get to the bottom of this complex crime.

Her plots and perpetrators are all plausible, and although I have not personally tried any of them, patrons tell me her recipes are relatively easy to prepare and well worth the effort.

I am normally not a mystery reader, but I find Davidson's combination of good character development, exciting drama and delicious food irresistible.

Her books are available in both bookstores and libraries. You will probably want to read them yourself rather than give them as gifts.

Hmmm … I need a break from the holiday rush. I think I will climb under a quilt on my sofa, nibble on that chocolate bar a friend brought me back from Vienna and review the recipes in Dying for Chocolate.

Happy holiday reading!

Kvasnicka, a former East Village Magazine news editor, has been the magazine's contributing editor and research consultant since 1989. She has a master's degree in information and library studies from the University of Michigan and works for the Genesee District Library.

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