LES LIAISONS CULINAIRES

Food is love, both literally and figuratively, in Staïkos's cheeky debut novel, a cross between a cookbook and a romantic and culinary comedy of manners, in which two Greek neighbors attempt to outcook each other and thus curry the favor of the married mistress they share. Damocles Dimou and Dimitris Isavridis are the urbane, accomplished gentlemen who find themselves engaged in a war for the affections of their sensuous, sexy mistress, Nana, with food as the weapon of choice. All three protagonists seem to get satisfaction from the various couplings, but Nana's fickle ways and her love of teasing create a game of dating one-upmanship that lands in the kitchen as well as the bedroom as the two bachelors try to outdo each other with one seductive Greek recipe after another. Staïkos, a chef who has penned half a dozen plays, is an engaging comic writer with a talent for erotically tinged scenes featuring plenty of food foreplay, but his inability to formulate a real plot is quickly exposed when he runs out of variations on his soup-and-seduction formula. The concept of marrying a cookbook with an erotic comedy is enticing, and readers who cook will certainly appreciate the exotic recipes reproduced in a series of attractive postcards accompanying the book. Staïkos tries to spice up the ending when Nana drops a bomb on her two suitors, but the absence of plot and the one-dimensional characters suggest the book should be stocked in the cookbook section. B&w illus. by Jeff Fisher. (Dec.)