The Grave Gourmet by Alexander Campion
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Firstly, the author wants you to know that women have breasts. He’ll remind you of that throughout the book.
Secondly, the author is male. You’ll know this from the first chapter when our main character, Capucine, mused that she was happy she didn’t wear a bra to a job interview. Capucine is young and hot, by the way. She starts out as a bored white-collar investigator who yearns for a grittier job and a chance to use her gun. She gets her shot when a man is found dead inside a restaurant. Since Capucine is married to a man who knows restaurants, she is deemed a good fit for the case.
Thirdly, our author’s first name is Alexander and he used to be a restaurant critic, and the name of our breasted protagonist’s round, sage, much-older food critic husband is named Alexandre. If she wasn’t married to Alexandre, Capucine wouldn’t have been assigned this case. Bonjour, Gary-Stu!
Fourthly, this book makes me never want French food again. Mr. Campion took great pleasure in reducing some delicious-sounding dishes down to their barbaric ingredients and vile preparation.
Fifthly(?), what was UP with Capucine’s male cousin and all of his creepster sexual advances?
And sixthly, hello police brutality! In one scene our young, hot protagonist (who has breasts, btw) watches a suspect get beaten over the head with a hardcover lawyer directory until he bleeds from the ears and passes out.
This was a Free Friday Nook book for me, and from the cover and description I thought it would be your run-of-the-mill cozy mystery, where the crime and perps are contained to the restaurant world. Instead, there’s international espionage and discussion of the auto industry. Which wasn’t hard to follow, but it was a swerve from what I expected.
I rated it two stars because I didn’t pay for it. It would have been one star had I paid any more than $1.99.
Disclaimer: I have breasts, and I wore a bra while reading this book.
