Kerry Greenwood - Cooking the Books (2011)

This is the sixth book in the Corinna Chapman series.

I adore Corinna. She's not Goddess-perfect in any way and that makes her one of my favourite characters. Corinna is nice, practical, hard-working, affectionate, loyal, not self-involved, empathic, open-minded, understanding, happy with herself - she's all the things people should be if we lived in a better world. Corinna is all the things that would make a better world.

Corinna is a niche baker in Melbourne CBD who lives in a very eccentric building, Insula, filled with equally eccentric residents. Mysteries come her way and, with the help of her lover Daniel, Corinna sets out to solve them. In this book someone is pranking the lead star of a new television series and it's threatening to end the show. Dramas among the actors and crew mirror the melodrama on the soap and Corinna bakes her way through pettiness and intrigue to find lost children, a nasty prankster and stolen bonds.

Jacklyn Brady - Arsenic and Old Cake (2012)

The premise behind Brady's 'Piece of Cake' mysteries is interesting, but the books themselves are without soul. They're the narration of someone dying, but you feel nothing. Honestly, they're stiffer than the corpse!

The story is Rita, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of victim #1, takes over his up-market bakery. They make cakes worth thousands of dollars for the elite and wealthy in New Orleans. So Rita has troubles with the staff, she falls over murders, insists on solving murders and is seeing two men but cannot decide between them. The basis of most mystery novels, right? But, in this novel, it's all 2D. I feel nothing for Rita or any of the characters. I thought that maybe it was just Brady's first book that was overly wooden, first books often are. So I kept reading, but this is book three and I should be feeling something for the cast of bakers by now - I'm not.

Everyone's problems are so textbook. Their reactions to things are pedestrian. "There's been a murder? Ohno, what in my house! *shrug* Now, who'd like a piece of cake?" It's like the author cannot write emotions. If the cast don't feel it, how am I going to feel it?

This is a mundane effort from Berkley's Prime Crime theme-based mysteries.

Susan Loomis - On Rue Tatin (2001)

This is a good book, very descriptive and interesting. I was a little confused three-quarters into the memoir when it stopped moving sequentially through their years living in rural France and suddenly I was reading about something that happened in their first year there. The book continued to meander about like that until the last few chapters which described her *SPOILER*. No, I won't tell you. It was too nice an ending.

Loomis is a good writer, the book was simply written and very entertaining. I was amused with the constant misunderstandings between American-French culture. Yes, the French have their own ways, but no, they don't want Loomis to tell them how to do it the American way because she thinks it is better.  As a Morrocan put it to Suzanna Clarke in her book 'A House in Fez' when she wanted to know why they did things so differently and how it was done so much better at home - "But you are not in Australia!".

I think it's a common problem with all travellers - we're so used to the ways we grew up with and it's difficult to adjust to a new culture. The Loomis family makes a valiant effort to acclimatise to French culture. They were obviously in love with the country and threw themselves into it wholeheartedly.

At the end of each chapter Loomis added a couple of recipes relating to the anecdotes and I'm planning on trying the vegetarian ones. They looked delicious and there were a lot of combinations that I'd never thought of before.

The only thing I would have liked to see different were some pictures of their life in France and the house they slowly renovated. It just felt like the kind of travel memoir that really needed pictures, particularly of the first rug they bought, the face her husband carved in the beam, and the house itself. Even a sketch of the house layout would have made understanding its relation to the local church so much easier. On Rue Tatin Blog Loomis has some pictures in her blog, but since she is a cookbook author it is mostly recipes. Still, it's worth a look.