“I have a sergeant who claims that peanut butter is a good investigative tool. He says you can tell where a person is from by what they add to peanut butter sandwiches. Bacon means they came from Philadelphia, bananas mean Memphis or maybe Tupelo. Jelly means different places, depending on the kind of jelly. Grape is Omaha, I think he said, guava is California and raspberry is Connecticut.”
That’s Mel, Jane Jeffrey’s detective boyfriend, speaking. This next scene takes place in the Foundation section of an “anchor department store”:
A towering, substantial platinum blonde was waiting on two elderly ladies… “Suzie, were you here yesterday, around noon?”
“Eternally. I’m part of the decor these days. There are people who claim I was just standing here one day in the middle of a field and they built the shopping center around me.”
As she leaves, she mutters: “Gotta flog some boob baskets.”
There’s a food subtext. (After all, Jill Churchill also wrote A Quiche Before Dying
.)
“In spite of the morbid circumstances, Edgar put on a feast. There were stuffed lamb chops, scalloped potatoes with a faint raspberry smell, a braised celery dish, a cold beet salad with sour cream and dill, and a cauliflower concoction that looked as if it had been parboiled and marinated in a spicy dressing. For those with a lesser appetite, there was a melon boat, cold meats and cheeses, and rye rolls. The food smelled wonderful, but Jane couldn’t have eaten a bite.”
It’s foodie porn circa 1994, an interim era after mystery writers discovered cuisine but before they began actually including recipes. (One can’t write about the niceties of cuisine without invoking gay men, and this book does so — combined with the incipient Bed & Breakfast craze.)
The book is funny except when it’s trying to be — or is that true of everything?