Blog Tour Review: Death in Nonna’s Kitchen | Alex Coombs | Old Forge Cafe #2

In the world of celebrity chefs, everyone is trying to put a knife in your back…

About the Book | Death in Nonna’s Kitchen

When famous TV chef Matteo McLeish turns up at the Old Forge Café and offers chef Charlie Hunter a place in his kitchen for the duration of Hampden Green’s local opera festival, she thinks it’s because he rates her cooking skills. In fact it’s because he’s heard she’s good in a crisis. The wholesome star of Nonna’s Kitchen is being blackmailed by one of his team.

Tempted by an improbably large pay cheque and the boost to her CV, Charlie accepts his offer. Does the threat lie close to home, or back in Italy with Matteo’s culinary roots? And can Charlie find the blackmailer before she’s swept up in an avalanche of death and scandal?

Review | Death in Nonna’s Kitchen

We were first introduced to Chef Charlie Hunter in Murder on the Menu, where Charlie had arrived in the rural, countryside village of Hampden Green in the wake of a break up and career crisis. Charlie had beaten her way through the top kitchen in London before starting her own restaurant, the Old Forge Café, in the small village. Charlie was eventually able to get her place up and running and receive some praise for her culinary skills and menu, which brings us to Death in Nonna’s Kitchen, where she has caught the eye of a celebrity chef who wants to bring her on for a stint on his team.

Charlie is flattered to be recognized for her cooking by such a prestigious celebrity chef as Matteo McLeish. His arrival at the Old Forge Café causes excitement among the team, especially when he invites Charlie to join his kitchen for the duration of Hampden Green’s local opera festival. But Charlie soon realizes it’s not her cooking that captured Matteo’s interest in her, it’s her unfortunate history solving a murder mystery. I guess Charlie is more notable for her detective skills than her cooking!

Still, being a talented chef is part of the appeal for Matteo. He may not have hired her only for that—he has a full kitchen team—but Charlie will be able to easily blend into his kitchen while she helps him solve an unfortunate blackmail problem he has found himself in. His wife, the beautiful and sex Graziana, had done some only-fans-like sex work before Matteo became famous. Now, someone has found it and is threatening to expose it if Matteo doesn’t pay. Unfortunately his show Nonna’s Kitchen is known for it’s family-oriented host. A sex scandal doesn’t quite fit into his brand.

Matteo and Charlie agree that he’ll tell his team he’s working on a new cookbook based on British pub and restaurant cuisine, and he’s invited Charlie to help him as “some who is used to relatively simple menus” (Was that intended as a slight? I certainly think so). It doesn’t take Charlie long to find who the most likely suspects are—after all, they all work for Matteo. He received the blackmail note in his work locker—something only his wife and staff would have access to.

The suspects are a cast of characters in and of themselves. There is the sous chef Georgio (known as Grumpy to Charlie), the development chef Tom (sporty and with a hipster beard), and the pastry chef Attila (unhappy and worried). Octavia is not an Italian chef, she’s an intern and quite arrogant in Charlie’s opinion. Murdo is a Scottish chef who is tall and gangly, but enthusiastic, bashful, and the only one to show interest in Charlie. The kitchen staff may be the prime suspects, but she can’t ignore Matteo’s agent and manager Charlotte (Pushy) and her assistant Douglas (Twitchy).

It isn’t long before Charlie is making waves with her presence (and her signature argumentative humor that we grew to love in Murder on the Menu!). But there is barely time to stake out a porn shop where the money drop location is before bodies start piling up. Whatever is going on with the blackmailer, it turns out they may also be a murderer.

Coombs writes Death in Nonna’s Kitchen with the dry humor and rough-and-tumble, quirky characters I came to love in Murder on the Menu. His books have a bit more edge than is common in cozy mysteries, but I think that is part of the charm. This series isn’t overly dark or gruesome, but his characters get into some scraps throughout the book on the quest to find the blackmailer and murderer.

There are plenty of leads to follow. I liked that there was a finite group of suspects and people that could have access. I did miss the crew at the Old Forge Café, though they make plenty of appearances during the mystery. It was refreshing to see a new setting after the dark events of the first book had certainly left a feeling that Hampden Green could use time to recover from that wild bout of murders. Expect some good red herrings along the way. Coombs has some surprises up his sleeves that make this a twist-filled mystery. As always, I love the culinary aspect and hearing about the food. You can tell Coombs is a bit of a foodie himself reading it!

Thank you to Random Things Tours for my copy. Opinions are my own.

About the Author | Alex Coombs

Alex Coombs studied Arabic at Oxford and Edinburgh Universities and went on to work in adult education and then retrained to be a chef,

Alex Coombs was born in Lambeth in south London. Silenced for Good is the first of a new series of novels featuring Hanlon as a PI. He lives in South Bucks but has family in Scotland and spends a considerable amount of time in Edinburgh and Argyll.

He is the author of four previous novels featuring Hanlon in the police ( the DCI Hanlon series). He also writes light-hearted crime fiction as HVCoombs for One More Chapter/Harper Collins.
Visit his website at www.alexcoombs.co.uk or Facebook@AlexCoombsCrime