What better time to celebrate Food than the week before such a wonderful food holiday as Thanksgiving. All week here on the PaperBackSwap Blog we will share reviews of our favorite foodie books, recipes, memories and thoughts of FOOD! We hope you enjoy Food Week here on the Blog and we wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!

-The PaperBackSwap Blog Team

Today we start with a review by our newest Blog Team member, Charlie M

Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl

Review by Charlie M. (bookaddicted)

Best known as the New York Times food critic and editor of Gourmet magazine, Ruth Reichl’s first memoir “Tender at the Bone” is funny, poignant,and in some ways eye-opening. One often imagines critics – food, movies,theater- as stodgy, humorless, sitting around with lips pursed just waiting to pounce on their subject. Reichl breaks that perception from the first page.

Growing up in New York City her discovery of the pleasures of food came not from her mother (dubbed “The Queen of Mold”) but from various sources, maids, friends’ mothers. Her real training came after living in a commune in Berkeley , California, sometimes creating meals out of food rescued from dumpsters.

Reichl worked in restaurants waiting tables, traveled the world and got an intimate look at how restaurants work. Eventually, she started writing about food and parlayed this into a lifelong career.

This book gives her surprising background and is sprinkled with some recipes.

If you love food and are looking for an enjoyable, brisk read, “Tender at the Bone” is a fine way to spend a few hours – especially with Thanksgiving looming.

         

Blood Lance by Jeri Westerson

Review by Jerelyn (I-F-Letty)

Once again Jeri Westerson takes you there, it is one of her strengths and it is one of the things I have come to respect about her writing.

In Blood Lance, Crispin is his usual self, a sucker for a pretty face and honorable to a fault.  A armourer  has taken a header off London Bridge.  While some say it is suicide, Crispin as a witness to the man’s fall has his doubts. In the early stages of the investigation, an old friend has come home deeply troubled by years of warfare, I don’t think I will be spoiling too much since Ms. Westerson has blogged about exploring PTSD within this story line, and I think she did a marvelous job showing that this could not have been a phenomenon of modern warfare.  Did Sir Thomas kill Master Grey, what is it that Thomas seeks and that is now missing?

I have always been fascinated by the community that lived on the bridge. Jack is back as Crispin’s mother hen, and side kick.  I truly love their relationship. There are great twists and turns, and I thought I had everything figured out, but as usual the final twist proved me wrong.  There is a great jousting sequence and I think it was very well imagined and written.  Chaucer is back, and we get to meet young Henry Bolingbroke, who will become Henry IV, I think we will see a lot more of him in the upcoming books.  4.5 stars

What else I love about Jeri Westerson is that she had been an active participant in the historical fiction forum, and a real friend to PBS blog.

She has once again agreed to do a Q and A in our forum November 14^th.  So if you have a question about the books or about anything, come on by.

Thank you Jeri and Jerelyn!

Click here to join the discussion LINK

The Rainbird Pattern by Victor Canning

Review By Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

The English police can’t catch the Trader, who has kidnapped two high government officials and traded them back for a small number of uncut diamonds. Working out of an agency whose members have a  license to kill, Inspector Bush and his superior Grandison are convinced the Trader will kidnap a third official – perhaps the highest in the land –  demand a huge number of diamonds and then retire with his female accomplice to live on his extorted gains.

Meanwhile, the elderly, rich, lonely Miss Rainbird hires psychic Blanche Tyler to canvas the spirit world for her long dead sister Harriet. Miss R. desperately wants find out why Harriet is disturbing her dreams. Harriet, it seems, wants Miss Rainbird to locate Harriet’s illegitimate son, adopted out to a humble family 40 years before, and do right by him with the wealth of the family. Wanting information to back up her spirit guide Henry and locate the nephew, Blanche sends her boyfriend George Lumley out to scout around. George collects background from people who are charmed by his happy go lucky nature and willingness to buy drinks.

The astute mystery reader will gladly anticipate how the search for the Trader and the search for the nephew will converge. The less said about the plot twists in this review, the better lest I spoil the surprises. Suffice to say, the ending is so messy and ominous that I found myself haunted for a couple of days.  Canning’s view of malum naturæ  (metaphysical evil) will bring to mind Graham Greene and Chesterton. In fact, in a review of this book the Catholic Herald approved, “The touch of the master becomes more apparent with each new Canning….””

The characters are excellently drawn. With his monocle and hard-won experience, Grandison persuasively argues that prayer and luck will lend a hand in catching the Trader.  The unmetaphysical Bush is inexorable and ruthless, fearing failure will stymie his career and hating the Trader for his cool audacity. Madame Blanche is earthy and shrewd at the same time, while harmless George is believable as the amateur detective. All the Rainbirds – even the dead ones – have plausible roles. The Trader turns out to be gloomy and cold, bent on using the proceeds from precious stones to retreat to a fortress while overpopulation and pollution cause the rest of us to drown in own crap.

Those readers into cognitive psychology will enjoy Canning’s portrayal of the relationship between the spirit medium and her clients. Knowing Miss Rainbird is self-centered, Madame Blanche depends on her client to try to make sense out of whatever vague information she channels from Henry. Canning emphasizes that even the skeptical – and Miss Rainbird is determined never to be fooled – can be manipulated into connecting ambiguous dots because we humans are pattern-seeking beings that search for meaning. Everywhere. With random data. Blanche, however much she fishes for details and sends George to gather intelligence, is sincere: she believes she has The Power.

When this published in 1972, it sold quite well and Alfred Hitchcock made a fair movie version, Family Plot (worth a look for William Devane). It was awarded the CWA Silver Dagger and nominated for the Edgar awards.  Since the Seventies, critics and serious mystery fans have come to regard this one as Canning’s best novel. Speaking of thriller and mystery writers in the Sixties and Seventies, as good as Eric Ambler, Hammond Innes, Andrew Garve and Geoffrey Household, sorry to say, Victor Canning seems to be joining them in the ranks of Forgotten Thriller Writers.

Moment Of Untruth by Ed Lacy

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, Toussaint Marcus Moore is an African-American detective in two novels written by Ed Lacy. In the first, Room to Swing, Moore finds himself investigating in a southern Ohio town and tracking down a killer. Facing a hostile white community, he has to deal with Jim Crow customs and being suspected in the assault of a police officer. This novel won the Edgar award for Best Mystery Novel in 1958.

The other was Moment of Untruth (1965), which I read recently. Touie’s wife Frances announces with glee that she is pregnant, to which he secretly reacts, “Damn, just what the world needed – one more kid … another colored kid.” Realizing that his mail carrier’s income will not make the nut when Frances goes on maternity leave, he calls his former employer at a PI agency for a short-term job.  The old partner sends him to glamorous, sweaty Mexico City where a wealthy widow wants him to catch the murderer of her husband.

Although the culprit is obvious, the plot has unexpected twists that make this an agreeable read. In Acapulco, then as now a fun park for the affluent, Touie feels disgusted at going through other people’s dirty laundry. He feels sympathetic toward his main suspect, who’s also a minority. Touie contemplates the uncomfortable notion that he is only “an Uncle Tom doing the white folks a favor.” Another highlight that distinguishes this novel are memorable side characters, especially  Janis, the drunken blonde from Texas and Frank, a retired American black who hilariously comes into a fortune, which does him little good.

Marcia Muller calls the Touie Moore character the “the first convincing black detective in crime fiction.” Academic critics regard him as a transitional figure – the decent man who does his best and doesn’t let prejudice or his own anger and frustration steal his joy– between the supermen Coffin Ed and Gravedigger in Chester Himes’ incredible novels in the Fifties and Ernest Tidyman’s character Shaft in the Seventies. Readers who like the tough, tense, and realistic detective fiction of Hammett and Macdonald tradition should get a kick out the Moore novels.

Pleasures of a Tempted Lady by Jennifer Haymore

Review by Jerelyn H. (I-F-Letty)

This is “the real” Meg’s story.  Eight years ago she was lost at sea, an event that not only devastated her family but also Captain William Langley the dashing man who loved her. It is also the event that started this series. Quite honestly Ms. Haymore has the chops that make this a novel that can stand alone, if you haven’t read the others.  But I cannot imagine why anyone would want to do that. This is a delightful series and the Donovan sisters are interesting and so are the men who capture their hearts.

Captain Langley is patrolling off the Cornwall coast looking for smugglers and pirates that plagued those waters.  His new ship the Freedom has just been through a sudden storm and Will is checking for any storm damage to his beloved ship, his first mate Mr. Briggs sees a small jolly boat in the distance, it’s mast broken and the sail trailing in the water.  Going to investigate they see two people in the boat a woman and her child.  While hauling her on board Will recognizes her and it seems a miracle, it is his Meg!  But how could this be, and the boy, is this strange little boy her son?  Where has she been, and why had she not contacted her family?  Can they overcome the time apart can she come to grips with the trauma that she has endured over the last 8 years and learn to trust and to love again?  Of course she can this is a romance after all.

The story line is a bit farfetched but this is pure escapism, so who gives a damn.  This book is the perfect weekend read and, I was able to finish it in one sitting. The bonus is that you get two love stories in one, for the youngest Donovan sister finds herself smitten by a wholly unsuitable man, but since when did that stop one of the Donovan sister?.   3.5 stars.