One Man Show by Michael Innes

Lady Judith Appleby took her husband Sir John Appleby, assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard,  to a show of the work of Gavin Limbert, a recently deceased (murdered) artist. Mr. Braunkopf,  the owner of the art gallery tried to interest Appleby in the purchase of a Limbert's masterpiece which was an abstraction named "The Fifth and Sixth Days of Creation". It was Braunkopf's hope that Sir John would purchase the painting and donate it to the Tate before rich Americans snapped it up. Braunkopf and Sir John had wandered away from this painting while discussing the price, and when they turned to view it again, the painting was gone; someone had stolen it.

Appleby returned to the Yard with a new interest in the murder of Gavin Limbert. At the Yard, his assistant, Cadover,  informed him that the Duke of Horton had called to inform Appleby that his Lordship's aquarium, goldfish, and silverfish were missing. This was considered quite odd because the Duke of Horton did not appear to be an ichthyologist,

Appleby and Cadover went to take a look at Limbert's rooms in a building which was a rooming house for artists. In Limbert's rooms, they discovered a valuable Stubbs painting which they removed to take to the security of the Yard. Appleby took the Stubbs painting home with him with the idea of returning it to the yard the next morning.They also found out that Mary Arrow, an artist who occupied the rooms above Limbert, had vanished taking only her toothbrush with her.

 When Appleby got home, he found the Duke of Horton having dinner with Lady Judith. The Duke clarified his previous request, and it seemed that the Aquarium is a painting by Vermeer, and the goldfish and silverfish was a painting of horses by Stubbs. These had been stolen from his home, Scamnum Court, one of the great English homes. Possibly they had been stolen while the Duke and Duchess were leading half-guinea tours of Scamnum which gave them the funds needed to live there. The Duke immediately recognized the Stubbs that Appleby had as one of the stolen paintings.

Appleby went on his own to investigate the art theft - this will be his One Man Show. While he was gone, Lady Judith also conducted her own investigation of the thefts. Both ended up in very dangerous situations before arriving at a solution of the various crimes in this book.

This is a literate and funny novel. There is little in the way of intense detection, the use of little grey cells, and the clues examined with a magnifying glass which are much loved by many mystery novelists. Sir John Appleby and Lady Judith advance from one situation to another coming across clues along the way which makes it all rather like a scavenger hunt.

 Art lovers will enjoy this book. They will recognize the artistic jargon which is spouted in the art gallery because it does not differ in essence from that which is spouted today. Appleby in the art gallery thinks "Gavin Limbert had perhaps been lucky,  after all. He had died young and untouched by disillusion - ignorant or careless of the oceans of twaddle and humbug which constitute the main response of the Anglo-Saxon peoples to any form of artistic expression."

This book was published in 1952 and has had two other titles, A Private View and Murder is an Art. It is currently out of print, but used copies are available online.

Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout

Nero Wolfe has actually left his house, and ventured out into the world. He and Archie Goodwin are attending a meeting of the Fifteen Master Chefs of the world at the Kanawha Spa in West Virginia. At this meeting, Wolfe, a great gourmet, will be the guest of honor and will deliver a speech on the closing night. Only an event and an honor such as these will tempt him to undergo the perils of a train trip from New York to West Virginia.

All fifteen chefs are not attending. Three have died, and two chose not to attend which has left ten master chefs to attend and compete and express their resentments about each other. The dubious honor of being the most disliked chef goes to Phillip Laszio who is the chef at the Hotel Churchill in New York. Lazlo is accused of stealing this job, stealing the wife of another chef, and of stealing recipes.

On the second night of this meeting, a wager is made by Louis Servan, chef of the Kanawha Spa and Ramsey Keith of the Hotel Hastings in Calcutta. A complicated test is set up and each of the attending chefs and Wolfe will participate in the tasting of nine samples of sauce printemps and will determine the missing ingredient in each sample. Phillip Laszio volunteers to prepare the samples of the sauce.  Servan believes that the tasters will only get eighty per cent correct. The tasting proceeds and each taster enters the test room alone; only Phillip Laszio is in the room with the taster. At the end of the test, the body of Phillip Laszio is found behind a screen in the room. He had been stabbed with a steak knife.

Several people ask Wolfe to find the murderer and offer to pay him, but Wolfe is reluctant to accept the job until his friend, Jerone Berin, chef of the Corridona in San Remo, is arrested. Then Wolfe starts to look at the possible suspects, and there are a great many suspects in this case. Each master chef had been allowed to bring one person with him, which means that there are wives and one daughter present. There is also the large kitchen staff of the Kanawha Spa who also may be involved. Raymond Liggett, the manager of the Hotel Churchill where Laszio was employed, also shows up after the murder seeking a new chef.

Wolfe does solve the case, and almost loses his life in the process. This was a very readable book, and foodies will enjoy it very much.  The really diligent reader may want to take notes about who is who, and who was where when the murder occurred. The kitchen staff are African Americans, and there are a number of racial slurs which are indicative of the time when this book was written. Wolfe and Goodwin are above this sort of thing, and treat the kitchen staff quite well.

I should note that there are recipes at the end for dishes mentioned in the story. This includes one for Tennessee opossum should you have an opossum on hand.

I have read this book for the 2014 Vintage Mystery Bingo in the category of a book which features food/cooks in some way. I found this to be the most difficult category in the Bingo. I read the book Meat for Murder which really had nothing to do with food. I also read Murder is Served which does have some references to a steak and a restaurant. I am indebted to Bev Hankins who reviewed this book in July for the suggestion of  this title. This book was published in 1938 and is now available in book paper and ebook form.

Mr. Bazalgette's Agent by Leonard Merrick

Miriam Lea is a twenty eight year old single unemployed woman living in a depressing and cheap boarding house in London. She writes about her life in her diary which is the form in which this novel is written. She has been a teacher and an actress, but she is now at wit's end, because she is about out of money and will need to leave the boarding house for the streets of London. Mr. Clausen, another resident of the boarding house, suggests that she look at an ad in the paper which has been placed there by Mr Bazalgette who is looking for detectives for his agency.

Miriam applies and find a job there because she is of a higher class than the usual applicant  and speaks several languages. Her first assignment is to locate Jasper Vining who until recently had been employed by a company of financiers. He had pleaded ill health and departed for what he said was a trip to Australia for his health. Nothing was suspected until a month later when it was discovered that he had forged checks for forty thousand pounds, and had taken two bonds worth fifteen hundred pounds.

Miriam is given a very large expense account, money for clothes, a generous salary, and a maid, Dunstan, who is an experienced detective employed by the agency.  She also has a year old photograph of Vining from which to identify him. She and Dunstan travel through the larger cities of Europe, and finally encounter Vining who shortly thereafter departs for diamond mines of South Africa. Miriam and Dunstan follow him, and I will not spoil your reading with details of what follows.

I liked Miriam. She is honest, straightforward, and has a good sense of humor.  Merrick had been in South Africa, and the descriptions of the diamond mines makes them sound quite appalling.

This book was written in 1888, and some say that it is the first full novel about a female detective, but I will not go into that debate here. This issue is discussed in some detail in the introduction to this book by Mike Ashley. This novel was not a commercial success, and later Merrick would buy up and destroy all the copies of it that he could find. The reason for this is not known.  He went on to write other novels, but never wrote another detective story. This book has been republished by The British Library and is available in paper and ebook forms.

Murder is Served by Frances and Richard Lockridge

Peggy Mott wrote an essay for her Experimental Psychology class on the subject of hate, specifically about how much she hated her husband and how much she would enjoy killing him. She turned the essay in to her professor,  John Leonard, who was very much disturbed by it. He was so disturbed by it that he called his friend and publisher, Jerry North, and asked him to read it. Pam and Jerry North both read excerpts of the essay, and they felt that it might just be the writing of an overly dramatic woman seeking attention, but they agreed to show it to their friend, police detective lieutenant Bill Weigand. Then they all agreed that there was nothing to do but wait and see what would happen.

Tony Mott was murdered in his office at Andre Maillaux, Inc, operators of the restaurant of the same name. Mott had been stabbed; nobody at the restaurant had seen anyone enter the office, but there were two other entrances which could have been used. Bill Weigand was put in charge of the case, and he immediately thought of the essay which Peggy Mott had written, because she was the estranged wife of Tony Mott.

Peggy Mott was terrified when she heard about the murder. She knew that the police would want to question her and she knew that they would suspect her of the murder and she also remembered the essay which she had written. She hoped to avoid the police by wandering the streets, and by hiding  for a long time in an all day movie theater. Then she sought the help of Weldon Carey one of her fellow classmates with whom she had developed a friendship (or romance). Carey had written a play which Tony Mott had agreed to produce, but Mott had then withdrawn his backing.

Bill Weigand questioned the people at the restaurant who might have had a reason for the murder of Mott. His partner Andre Maillaux was the orginal sole owner of the restaurant until the restaurant needed an infusion of money to modernize it. Maillaux wished to be known for his superb food,  but he would hardly want to kill Mott who continued to bring business and patrons into the restaurant. Elaine Britton, Mott's current girl friend, came forward to say that she saw Peggy Mott leaving the restaurant at about the time that the murder occurred. Later, Elaine Britton would also be murdered.

Weigand is very sure that Peggy Mott is the murderer. The Norths, who will eventually meet Peggy Mott, are sure that she is not the murderer. There are actually few viable suspects in this book, but Weigand's tireless investigations bring to light other motives for the few suspects that there are. This is a very well written book, and somewhat more serious in its approach to detection than the other Pam and Jerry North books which I have read.