Roux Morgue

Trouble continues to follow pastry chef Mary Ryan. First, there was the murder in Johnson's debut mystery, BEAT UNTIL STIFF. Now Mary has returned to teach at her alma mater, a culinary school, just in time to witness students and faculty dropping like flies. Narrator Christine Williams's breezy tone offsets the tension of the mystery and heightens both the mouth-watering kitchen scenes and the back-alley murder settings. Light as a soufflÄ in places, ROUX MORGUE provides the listener with a feast of adventure and a soupìon of romance. Pick up a fork and indulge. R.O. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 11, 2008
The growing rift between the “dinosaurs” and the “young brats” on the teaching staff at San Francisco’s École d’Epicure fuels the highly amusing action in Johnson’s superior second cozy to feature funky pastry chef Mary Ryan (after 2002’s Beat Until Stiff
). Mary is unpleasantly surprised when Inspector O’Connor of SFPD homicide shows up as a student claiming he’s on stress leave. Although the cop is her ex-husband’s married best friend, Ryan and the sexy O’Connor have obvious chemistry. Tension among École’s chefs escalates with public insults, a petition to fire one of the classically trained dinosaurs and a water fight in the school’s prestigious restaurant. When one chef dies after an allergic shellfish reaction with no shellfish on the menu, and another is strangled at home, Ryan suspects something more sinister than differences of culinary theory. In one of many farcical scenes, Ryan enlists the aid of a hostile friend-of-a-friend to hack into École’s computer system to dig for answers. This enjoyable romp should gain Johnson new fans.