Knife Skills for Beginners

MasterChef semifinalist Murrin puts his culinary expertise to good use in this charming debut mystery featuring London chef Paul Delamere. After culinary celebrity Christian Wagner breaks his arm, he asks Delamere to substitute for him at a posh Westminster cooking school. Delamere agrees, happy both for the extra cash and for the distraction from mourning the recent death of his partner. Delamere’s eight students, each of whom will board at the school for the duration of the weeklong course, include an aristocrat, her daughter, a pharmacist, and a last-minute sign-up who knows the school’s administrator. At first, Delamere’s charges are disappointed that the hunky Wagner won’t be teaching them, but gradually, he wins them over. His good fortune runs out, though, when he finds a corpse in the kitchen, its head nearly severed by a meat cleaver Delamere had used to chop up pigeon carcasses earlier the same day. Delamere becomes the obvious suspect, forcing him to ferret out which of his students is the real killer before he winds up in prison. Murrin delivers a brisk, funny variation on the classic closed-circle formula. A sequel would be welcome. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath Literary. (Jan.)