August 2019 Newsletter

NEWSLETTER AUGUST 2019

LIFE IN MEXICO

Geraldo’s Restaurant.

We are at Geraldo’s Cantina in central Santiago, three doors down from the parish church. The exterior walls are made of brick and plaster, some two feet thick. A tin roof is held aloft by wooden beams. Patrons sit at picnic tables beneath naked light bulbs and whirring fans. Chickens peck at the soil under an adjacent grove of papaya trees.

We are here on a Saturday evening to celebrate Linda’s birthday. Geraldo makes the best margarita in town, and we toast her health as a man with an accordion plays a celebratory tune.

Geraldo, a handsome man with bulging biceps, arrives at our table with his order pad. “What would everyone like to eat?”

Linda reckons that Geraldo’s mom’s pork is the best in town. “I’ll have the ribs,” she says.

Andy orders garlic soup, and Coleen opts for the tortilla stuffed with BBQ beef and fried onions.

The chicken fajita catches my eye. “Is it free range?”

Geraldo turns and points to a hen plucking away at the dirt. “That’s all we serve!”

My meal turns out to be excellent. The breast is tender and moist, with a tangy taste that I cannot quite identify. Just as we are finishing, a man in a white jacket walks in and checks out the kitchen. He soon leaves, satisfied that all is well.

“That’s the restaurant inspector,” explains Geraldo. “He always gives us a clean bill of health – never found a single cockroach!”

 “How do you manage to get rid of cockroaches?” I ask.

Geraldo nods proudly to his flock. “The chickens eat them!”

RECIPES FROM MY BOOKS

Pintade Farcie

From A Paris Moment

This recipe, stuffed chicken, is a favourite in Paris, and can usually be purchased from a butcher ready-prepared. But unless you happen to be in the Marais or the Left Bank, you’re going to have to make it yourself.

Start with a pound of minced veal (or pork), and poach it in one cup of chicken broth. Drain the meat and mix it with a cup of chopped mushrooms, one cup of breadcrumbs, a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of pepper.

Pintade is a type of wild fowl, but you can make do with a whole chicken. Split the chicken open and carefully remove the breast bone to create a large cavity. Stuff the cavity with the filling and use butcher’s twine to string it back together. Place the roast into a Creuset iron pot on a bed of roughly sliced onions, pour in the chicken broth and cook for 1 ½ hours at 400 F.

When cooked, remove the pintade, tent it with tinfoil and let it rest for 10 minutes. Lift the bed of onions out and set aside. Place the iron pot on a stove burner set at medium. Mix two tablespoons of white flour with the broth and stir until it turns to gravy (add a bit of red wine for extra flavour).

Slice the pintade like a stuffed meat roast. Serve with the gravy, onion garnish, roast potatoes and a hearty Bordeaux.

Freebie!

In celebration of the launch of the latest Jack Kenyon Mystery Series, Runaway Bomb, I’m giving away the eBook to the first in the series, Secret Combinations. Just go to the link and download the file to your eReader!

Download Secret Combinations for Free!

Special Event

Runaway Bomb Book Launch.

My latest Jack Kenyon FBI mystery thriller is being released Friday, August 9!

Here’s what readers are saying about it;

“I love Runaway Bomb! It’s well-written and very exciting. I can’t wait to read the next FBI Jack Kenyon Mystery!”

MC Anderson, founder of the San Miguel de Allende Book Club.

You can pre-order here!

Pre-order your copy of Runaway Bomb here!

Credit; Gary Larson

Book review

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

By Stuart Turton

This is both an ingenious and frustrating mystery novel.

It begins with a man stumbling out from a dark forest after witnessing what he believes to be a murder. He seeks refuge in Blackheath, an ancient, crumbling English mansion where Lord Hardcastle and his wife are hosting a fete on the anniversary of the death of their infant son. The man has suffered a blow to his head and cannot remember his past, although the guests in attendance have known Aiden for years and offer him succour. They are also sceptical of his reports of a murder in the woods, however. A hunt has been planned; the men dubiously set off in search of a corpse.

So far, so good. It appears to be a classic whodunit of the Agatha Christie school; murder most foul, a secluded location, and a cast of disreputable men and women with motives ranging from lust to greed to revenge, and an amateur sleuth to figure it out.

But that is where all similarities end, because the author has incorporated a ‘Groundhog Day’ device, in which Aiden is given 24 hours to solve the murder then is recast into a different guest at the stroke of midnight. One day he occupies the body a drug-dealing doctor, the next a fat, aging banker, with a total of eight days to figure out who keeps killing Evelyn Hardcastle.

If that doesn’t seem complicated enough, there are other competing sleuths. They lie, cheat and mislead one another; the person who solves the murder mystery first will be released from this rustic, repetitious purgatory. The effect is to create a bewildering multiplicity of plot twists and turns that has the reader returning to previous chapters in order to rewind the narrative.

For lovers of complex, innovative mysteries, the novel is a delight that vicariously teases the brain – there is good reason it was bestowed the Costa Book Award for First Novel. Be aware, however, that it is also a supernatural-type mystery in which a mysterious figure concealed in the costume of a medieval doctor, complete with dark cloak and raven’s mask, intervenes in Aiden’s efforts.

In the end, the solution to the murder and the reason for the Groundhog Day device are both brilliant and vexing. I heartily recommend The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, but I also warn you; read at your peril.

FAVOURITE TV AND MOVIE ADAPTATIONS

JUSTIFIED, TV series, (2010-1015)

Produced by FX Network (now available on Amazon Prime).

Conceived by Elmore Leonard

I’ve always been a big fan of Elmore Leonard. He is a genius at writing dialogue between grifters, drifters and low life, and creating the most ridiculous, yet utterly believable crime dramas. His books have been made into numerous movies, including Get Shorty, with John Travolta playing a loan-sharking mobster who moves to Hollywood and discovers that the two businesses aren’t that far apart, and Out of Sight, in which George Clooney plays an escaped bank robber who kidnaps a beautiful US marshall.

Justified is based on Fire in the Hole, a short story written by Leonard. The Emmy award-winning TV series features Raylan Givens (played by Timothy Olyphant), a 21^st century US Marshall with a decidedly 19^th century approach to criminal justice. Givens is the archetypal Leonard hero; a lawman who can outdraw, outdrink and outfight any bad guy who ever had the misfortune to come his way. Thanks to Leonard’s presence on the series as an executive producer from 2010 to his death in 2013, Givens’ enemies, mostly back-woods Kentucky hillbillies, are fleshed out beyond the typical stereotypes that lazier writers might have been tempted to foist on viewers. Leonard’s laconic sense of humor and writing skill elevates this TV series well above the crime genre norm, and I highly recommend it.