Someone is Killing the Great Chefs of America

This delectable, high-energy sequel to Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe finds gorgeous, svelte, Valentino-clad pastry chef Natasha O'Brien back in the States, now promoting American regional cooking. With her mad mentor and would-be murderer, the obese food critic Achille van Golk, buried in a Swiss cemetery, Natasha prepares to launch American Cuisine magazine, while taking gigs as chef for the new occupants of the White House and organizing the upcoming Culinary Olympics in Paris. But readers know from the outset that Achille is alive, transformed in body and spirit into trim Alec Gordon, who lands a job at American Cuisine . While various high-profile chefs in Dallas, L.A. and New York are gruesomely bumped off (barbecued, roasted and poached, respectively), Natasha dispels her growing anxiety in high-spirited sex with assorted partners, including her ex-husband, food conglomerate king Maximillian Ogden. This binge of foodie name-dropping, laced with one-liners (a bitchy critic accuses a new chef in L.A. of ``Pucking around with the pizza''), culminates in a frenzy of culinary excess in Paris. Alec's struggles to repress the appetites of his former self will strike a chord in any reader who has ever battled a craving. The calories in this creampuff entertainment may be empty, but they are undeniably delicious. Author tour. (Apr.)