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There are so many reasons to enjoy DEATH DINES IN. First of all, the collection of authors covers a broad range of styles and sub-genres within the mystery field. The recipes sound wonderful, even the ones I know I'll never make for one reason or another. And the stories themselves are like petit fours: perfect little gems, each one making the reader want just one more. The collection starts off with a tale of double-crosses and intrigue: Mary Jane Maffini's Cocktails with the Corpse. While most readers of mystery fiction tend to root for the good guys, in this tale, one isn't quite sure at the end just who the good guys are. Maybe it's just a matter of degree. I think my particular favorite is Donna Andrews's The Birthday Dinner. Aunt Millicent, recently released from a mental institution after her second poisoning incident, has invited the family over for dinner. Nobody wants to attend, even though she only poisoned people who deserved it. "Her husband Jack wouldn't have died if he hadn't eaten a second helping of pie after she specifically told him not to." And Heidi's husband wouldn't have had any problems with the poisoned bourbon if he hadn't picked the lock on Millicent's liquor cabinet while using her house for a rendezvous with his mistress. Still . . . people are reluctant to dine with Aunt Millicent. Andrews's sense of humor, and her ability to incorporate that into her writing, is wonderfully displayed in this story. Fans of Midnight Louie will enjoy Carole Nelson Douglas's License to Koi, although it certainly didn't encourage any tendencies I might have had toward adventuresome dining and the tasting of fugu. Midnight Louie, however, is delightful in this humorous romp. Not all of the stories are humorous. Anne Perry, introducing a new character, Theolonius Quade, in Sing a Song of Sixpence, conveys so much about relationships and social structures in a few short pages, telling a tale reminiscent in some ways of Dangerous Liaisons. For fans of historical fiction, there is Elizabeth Foxwell's Alice and the Agent of the Hun, which stars Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth in a spy story set during World War One. It's difficult to pull off writing about a famous person in a real setting without the whole thing being so totally improbable that the reader just can't buy it. Foxwell has done her research, and the setting and tone make this a believable Alice Longworth story. I enjoyed all the stories, and feel they are truly represent the skills and styles of the individual authors (at least the ones who are familiar to me). I don't mean to slight the authors whose work I didn't specifically mention, but giving a reprise of every story would make this review much too long. The authors not already mentioned are: Claudia Bishop, Rhys Bowen, Don Bruns, Meg Chittenden, Nick DeChario, Marcos Donnelly, Parnell Hall, Lyn Hamilton, Jeremiah Healy, Dean James, and William Moody. As you can see, a wonderful pu-pu platter, a dim-sum delight for fans of the short story and the mystery genre.
Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, May 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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