{"id":5338,"date":"2023-11-02T07:01:04","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T14:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5338"},"modified":"2023-11-02T07:01:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T14:01:04","slug":"rhys-bowen-the-proof-of-the-pudding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/rhys-bowen-the-proof-of-the-pudding\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhys Bowen: The Proof of the Pudding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Royal Spyness #17<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The fun factor in this series never diminishes.\u00a0 In this outing, Lady Georgie is awaiting the arrival of her baby.\u00a0 She\u2019s settled in her godfather\u2019s house, and her big issue is finding a chef.\u00a0 At the moment, her longtime employee Queenie is running the kitchen, but she\u2019s not a trained chef and Georgie has found a candidate in Paris who is about to appear.\u00a0 Queenie is in a classic huff, saying she won\u2019t take orders from foreigners, when the dashing Pierre appears at the front door and all Queenie\u2019s objections disappear.<\/p>\n

As the kitchen settles into a new routine \u2013 and Pierre turns out to cook amazing food (Georgie had encountered him as a waiter who was an aspiring chef) \u2013 when, of course, a spanner is thrown into the works.\u00a0\u00a0 When Georgie gives a successful dinner party, with many compliments to the chef, her eccentric neighbor, Sir Mortimer, asks to borrow him for an event at his home.\u00a0 He\u2019s charging for the dinner to raise money for charity, and gives the chef carte blanche. The chef cannot resist, and Georgie is willing to share.<\/p>\n

The dinner is a mix of celebrities and more ordinary neighbors, including an old school chum of Sir Mortimer\u2019s.\u00a0 The celebs include Laurence Olivier and Agatha Christie.\u00a0 The dinner also features a tour of Sir Mortimer\u2019s poison garden.\u00a0 It\u2019s a success and all seem to head home happily enough when the next morning it turns out there\u2019s been a rash of food poisoning affecting various members of the party, including Sir Mortimer.<\/p>\n

When one of them dies, suspicion turns to the chef.\u00a0 Not only does he proclaim his innocence, but so does Queenie, who had been working as his assistant for the evening.\u00a0 Not only that but Queenie comes down with a case of food poisoning herself.\u00a0 However, the police chief, suspicious of foreigners, is sure Pierre is the culprit.\u00a0 Of course, Georgie and Darcy are on the case, finding Pierre a lawyer, and combing the countryside and interviewing party goers for clues.\u00a0 Agatha Christie proves especially helpful.<\/p>\n

It’s obvious the denouement will come with the arrival of Georgie\u2019s baby (her dreaded sister in law Fig has appeared to help out).\u00a0 It\u2019s always a bit tricky when an author features real people as characters, and in a book like this one, a traditional detective story owing much to Christie\u2019s template, it\u2019s even trickier, and Bowen pulls it off.\u00a0 If it\u2019s a bit of a reader\u2019s fantasy to accompany Lady Georgie and Agatha Christie as they stroll through a poison garden together, so be it.<\/p>\n

The detective work, as always, is sound and even better, the characters are specific and interesting.\u00a0 I never read a Rhys Bowen book where I finish it uncertain of a mushy swash of characters populating the story.\u00a0 In her capable hands all of the personalities are memorable, as was this fun read.\u00a0 This has long been a favorite series and I don\u2019t see that changing any time soon. — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Royal Spyness #17 The fun factor in this series never diminishes.\u00a0 In this outing, Lady Georgie is awaiting the arrival of her baby.\u00a0 She\u2019s settled in her godfather\u2019s house, and her big issue is finding a chef.\u00a0 At the moment, her longtime employee Queenie is running the kitchen, but she\u2019s not a trained chef and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[189,120,1430,10,188,1431,1432,53,1276,1434,1433],"class_list":["post-5338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-berkley","tag-cooking","tag-english-countryside","tag-historical","tag-lady-georgie","tag-manor-house","tag-poison-garden","tag-rhys-bowen","tag-robin-agnew","tag-royal-spyness","tag-the-proof-of-the-pudding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5352,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5338\/revisions\/5352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}