The adventures of Irene, the diva chef

Balancing this week of sad news and heavy worries, I have good news—at least from my point of view. I spent the week proofreading Finding Florence, the third Irene in Chicago Culinary Mystery. And I’m glad to report that Irene will be back in Chicago July 5^th, providing Chance’s jet brings her as planned. I may be delighted to report this, but Henny is frantic. Here’s a taste of what Irene’s up to this time:

Irene is obsessed. And Henny’s life is a mess.

Irene has flown to Chicago from France in high style – the private jet owned by her longtime, on again-off again-on again amour, the handsome but mysterious billionaire Chance Charpentier. Her infamous “voices” have told her that something is horribly amiss with a person dear to her.  When she arrives, she learns that a death notice for Florence Sherman, her sometime friend, previous neighbor, and member of an historic Chicago family, has been published in the Sun-Times. Once Irene discovers her friend’s body is missing, the diva chef refuses to leave Chicago until she solves the mysterious disappearance. But, with Irene in Chicago, Henny’s successful “From My Mother’s Kitchen” TV cooking show and her precious time with Patrick, husband of her dreams, are seriously compromised by Irene’s insistence that finding Florence trumps any other concerns. So Henny struggles to balance Irene’s demands with the rest of her life and to find Florence, dead or alive, so Irene will go back to France.

Irene’s certainty that the past holds the key to Florence’s disappearance brings in a bit of Chicago history, and food references season the text. An appendix of recipes from both Irene and Henny’s mom is attached.

 I’ve had a lot of fun with Irene, Henny, and their friends and lovers. In these difficult times, they provide a real contrast, letting me escape to an easier world. In fact, they let me escape to the neighborhood of my childhood—Hyde Park on Chicago’s South Side, where everything is different from my days there but in many way still the same. Henny’s world is contemporary but pre-pandemic and politics just isn’t a subject.

Food is a big subject, ranging from Irene’s faux French (she does cook French dishes, but she just doesn’t have the Cordon Bleu background she claims) to Henny’s recipes from her mom’s Texas kitchen. With the latest book, you can cook anything from Coq au Vin to King Ranch Casserole.

Love is a big subject too. After two installments, this third book finds Henny deliriously happily married to the man of her dreams. Patrick not only loves her, he curbs what are sometimes her wildest instincts and her even wilder tongue. And Irene? The domineering diva is a woman in love—just look at her on the cover. The object of her affections is Chance Charpentier, the billionaire with whom she had a daughter twenty years earlier. Like Patrick, Chance is a balance for Irene. You’ll fall in love with him, as I have.

Cooking as a career is front and center in Irene’s stories, as told by Henny. Irene now runs a small café in a small French town near Aix-en-Provence. It is the kind of place where the old men go to drink wine, eat a hearty gibbolet with duck, and tell tales—until Irene calls their wives to come get them. Henny, on the other hand, has a TV show with a national network, “Recipes from my mom’s kitchen.” She works hard and sees her star rising—until Irene comes into town and demands her attention.

The Irene/Henny adventures, which Henny tells in her own, slightly snarky, slightly insecure voice, began in Saving Irene, when Henny was gofer for Irene’s cooking show—and ended, with Patrick, saving Irene’s spoiled daughter, Gabrielle, from a kidnapper. Irene subsequently decamped for France, but in Irene in Danger, she came back to Chicago for Henny and Patrick’s wedding—and nearly caused the cancellation of the wedding by getting involved with some unsavory characters.

I had so much fun with these stories that I already know the fourth one—Irene simply has to go to Texas. Can’t you see the clash of cultures? And the cover art? Irene in a Stetson! That’s another thing—I love the cover art of these books. For the first one, I knew what I wanted—Irene front and center, in a toque, with a background of typical apartment dwellings in Hyde Park. Having Irene as a central figure worked so well that we put her against the gilt of the Palmer House Hotel in the second book. And now for the third—don’t you think she looks like a woman in love? And of course that’s the wonderful skyline of Chicago’s North Shore. Thanks to designer Amy Balamut for the covers and the formatting.

Watch for Finding Florence July 5^th on Amazon!