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Phyllis Richman should be better known for her mysteries than she is (as far as I know, she hasn't gotten a lot of attention...I could be wrong...I've been wrong before). While I don't ever quite get the fascination some folks have for "food" or "culinary" mysteries, I find this series, featuring a restaurant critic and syndicated columnist, to be very entertaining and informative. Just before picking up Who's Afraid of Virginia Ham (and is that not an entry in the best title competition of 2001), I heard a conversation on my local NPR radio station (I know, I know but I really do listen to NPR!) involving three restaurant critics. Halfway through, I realized it sounded familiar; I had heard similar comments from Richman's Chas Wheatley --about how hard it is to get friends to go to the restaurant the third time ("but I don't like fish, I want a steak again!"). That verisimilitude added to my sense that I was reading the real thing. In this book, the third of the series, there is a new employee at the Washington Examiner, a know-it-all named Ringo Laurenge. I despised him from page one, and that was a problem throughout the book. He clearly is the victim (stated so on page two so I'm not spoiling anything here) but I wish he'd been kicked off the planet earlier. I couldn't quite buy how everyone was charmed by this man, even though Wheatley does explain it. He's got an answer for everything, has been everywhere, knows everyone (although Chas catches him in one lie very early on) and I just don't like people who lecture instead of talk. Chas has been a restaurant critic and reviewer for years, and yet he's always telling her he knows more than she does. He steals story ideas, pretending he had the idea first. When Chas finally complains (along with her friend Sherele, whose theater turf he's also ventured into) their boss says they're just jealous. I don't know; when a long-time employee comes to you with a gripe about a newcomer, shouldn't she get just a little edge? The story is still very engaging; you get to dine vicariously with Chas and her love, reporter Dave Zeeger. In a major cameo I really appreciated, Samir is back from his last appearance in Murder on the Gravy Train.Ý Ringo deserves his demise; although it isn't at all clear who did it, it's easy to figure out why it was done. By the time he is killed, he is thoroughly hated as a conniving, undermining story thief whose self-importance is largely self-created. But I itched all the way through because he was so despicable. I know there have to be villains in every mystery, victim or not, but it was very difficult to read far enough to be rid of him. Another plaint: I swear, although I know I saw the page count, it felt to me as if there was a chapter, or a half-chapter or a few pages missing between Chapter 17, Chas' visit to Florida, ostensibly to review food at Disneyworld but really to research Ringo's family and background, and Chapter 18, when suddenly, she's abruptly back in DC. The things she learns from Ringo's sister should have been followed up on, more questions should have been asked, more information ascertained. The delusional mother who puts down Ringo's childhood behavior to curiosity (while the sister makes reference to Josef Mengele) isn't quite enough reason to just go away; why didn't they meet the sister alone, later on? Why didn't they follow up so they could comprehend the person they were dealing with for real? It felt like an editor had decided that Richman had to cut some pages and poof, they were gone. The resolution was intriguing; I'm not a hundred percent sure I buy it, but so what? That wasn't the real focus of the book, to be honest. The politics of restaurants in high-stakes Washington D.C., Wheatley's look into how those verrrry expensive restaurants get to be so expensive, her friendship with Sherele, the food talk, the politics of newspapers all make a good story. I can't say I wold have known what to do with a Ringo - I never encountered such a slimeball in my working days, but almost no one seemed to back him down. Maybe I'm just not susceptible to charm, when it's that phony and self-serving, or maybe I just got lucky.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, July 2001
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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