Eat, Drink, and Be Buried: A Gourmet Detective Mystery - Hardcover

Peter King is a full-time writer. Eat, Drink, and Be Buried is his sixth Gourmet Detective mystery. He lives in Florida.

A surfeit of menu descriptions, both medieval and modern, an overloaded plot and a large cast of characters can't disguise the essential thinness of this sixth book in King's Gourmet Detective series (after 2000's A Healthy Place to Die). King's nameless "food-finder" narrator is hired to prepare medieval banquets for guests who pay to watch jousting, deer hunting and even a battle at Harlington Castle, a 16th-century English manor house now staging "Medieval Days" pageants. The novel opens with a vivid joust in which one participant appears to be beheaded. Soon after one combatant dies of poisoning, the food-finder once again turns private detective. At the behest of Lord Gerald Harlington, he spends several long days at the manor and in London, investigating too many Harlington family members and food purveyors, all of whom are suspect. Among the more memorable are an insufferably snobbish Harlington cousin, Neville Woodward; Gontier, the castle's resentful chef; and Sir Gerald's flirtatious daughters, Angela and Felicity. Unfortunately, rather than develop his characters, the author tends simply to repeat their roles and identities. A rousing final scene in the castle's dungeon takes us back to the Middle Ages, where this convoluted adventure began. Like other books in the series, this one has an appealing jacket design, which may fool some readers into thinking they're getting more than the literary equivalent of fast food.

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