Chas Wheatley

In her eagerly awaited fiction debut, the Washington Post's best-loved, award-winning food writer, Phyllis Richman, has cooked up a tempting tale of mousse, mayhem, and murder: a tautly woven insider's look at the food and newspaper worlds. Laurence Levain was a culinary superstar, and the high-profile owner and chef of Chez Laurence, an internationally renowned restaurant in Washington, DC. When Levain collapses in his clogs the night before a star-studded black-tie benefit dinner, all bets are on his soaring cholesterol level. But one person has her doubts-Chas Wheatley, the Washington Examiner's saber-penned restaurant critic. Still carrying a torch for Levain after an affair they had years before, she breaks out all her investigative resources to find the culprit. But the big-city newspaper and food communities are deadly competitive.

Chas Wheatley, a food writer with a taste for sleuthing, once again takes on the scandalous world of Washington tongue-waggers and the deep-throated secrets of the restaurant business. Researching her new column, Chas discovers something is rotten with Washington's most popular new restaurant. The head chef has gone missing, and no one is willing to give her a straight answer as to his whereabouts. Bodies begin to surface around the nation's capital, confounding the police. But Chas' clever eye for detail, her love of good gossip, and her connections in the newspaper and culinary worlds lead her into the underbelly of the business-and onto a twisted trail of deceit, blackmail, and murder.

Slick, slimy, and completely without conscience, Ringo Laurenge has the right stuff to be a great reporter-and the most hated man at the Washington Examiner. Even food editor Chas Wheatley wants to strangle him for trying to steal her story on America's priciest restaurants. Other staffers have reasons to want to kill him too. Not surprisingly, someone does. Now, while Chas shares delicious tidbits about today's trendiest eateries, she sifts through clues and sniffs out suspects-until the evidence cuts close to the bone and implicates a person Chas admires, or even loves. Food critic Richman serves up another culinary whodunit filled with lots of juicy insider information.