'Another excellent addition to this superb series' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Real reader review
Charlie Hunter does not like Christmas, especially the lead into it -- cooking endless servings of Christmas dinner. So when she is asked by Graeme Strickland, Michelin-starred chef, egomaniac and friend, to help out in a hotel restaurant in Edinburgh's New Town, for a fortnight, she accepts with alacrity. The Head Chef, David Jenkins, is a very old friend of Strickland's, and the job entails covering temporarily for a sous chef position, while Strickland provides cover for Charlie, gratis, in the Old Forge Café.
She is scheduled to be there for a fortnight. But Charlie arrives in Edinburgh just in time to discover David Jenkins being stretchered out. An autopsy reveals the Chef has been poisoned with mushrooms. Was it an accident or a murder attempt? It looks like Charlie may be doing a rather different job…
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
Another great episode in the life and work of Charlie Hunter. Graeme Strickland - arrogant super chef at his upmarket, high class restaurant near to Charlie’s more humble (but popular) and smaller restaurant - asks her to go and act as a sous chef for his friend who is head chef at a prestigious hotel in Edinburgh. As she arrives the chef is taken away in an ambulance and soon Charlie finds herself not only promoted to head chef, but Graeme begs her to find out who killed his friend Dave Holland. Charlie soon settles in the kitchen and makes some friends, but also some enemies. Can she find out the truth and sort out the ensuing mess before it’s time for her to return to her Cotswold home? I couldn’t put this down and I hope I don’t have to wait a year for the next instalment in Charlie’s life!
I love this series and I get that in a quiet countryside area there shouldn’t be too many mursers but I missed the smallness of her own kitchen. But all in all, a good story