Chefs and crime are a popular literary "pairing." Anyone reading this who
hasn't already done so might like Michael Bond's _Monsieur Pamplemousse_
(1986), at least for the gastronomic details and what the dog does; or the
earlier and classic _Someone is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe_ by Nan
and Ivan Lyons, 1976 (movie adaptation, 1978). (These titles have surfaced
on these newsgroups before, also.) Quotation is to recommend the Lyons
book.

--------
Nathasha O'Brien had been awake nearly twenty-four hours.
Body time was 7:00 AM September ninth, despite her fickle
Piaget insisting it was noon. Even her loose chestnut
Kenneth-cut hair was at twelve o'clock high. Her pink Chanel
suit was imperiously unwrinkled. Her face (her own) was
clean, soap scrubbed except for a trace of silver Givenchy
shadow around her very big brown eyes. She wore no
lipstick. Ever. It was a question of taste.

She passed through British immigration, holding her maroon
Gucci valise in one hand, and her red alligator Mark Cross
case and her pink suede Hermès purse in the other. Walking
under the track of green "nothing to declare" lights at Customs
she frowned at the agent as her alligator case hit against a
low counter. It opened and twelve knives fell at his feet.

"Oh, ****," Natasha said.

[She is then escorted to a security room where she explains,
to a skeptical officer, that she is carrying the knives because
she is a professional chef, summoned to cook for "the Queen
-- that Queen," as she points to a picture on the wall. A robust
dark-haired uniformed policewoman then enters.]

"This is our Miss Creighton," he said. "She will --"

"She will not. Not one finger," Natasha said, rising from her
chair. Miss Creighton narrowed her eyes and leaned forward
like a bulldog eyeing a fly. "I will not have Our Miss Creighton
lay a finger on me. Nor will I continue this absurd interview.
...."

[Near the beginning of Nan and Ivan Lyons, _Someone is Killing the Great
Chefs of Europe,_ Harcourt Brace 1976, (Ballantine paperback edition), ISBN
0345323688, basis for the 1978 movie of similar title, in which Jacqueline
Bisset plays the character of Natasha. Source courtesy of Andrew Trice
III, currently a chef in Savannah, Georgia (US).]


--
"I think it's Mary's blancmange that is so frightfully depressing. It's
like something out of a mortuary." [Agatha Christie, The Murder at the
Vicarage, 1930.]