Review: Dial M For Meat Loaf

Dial M For Meat Loaf Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Ellen Hart
Class/Genre: Mystery Culinary
Series: Sophie Greenway # 6
pub by Fawcett, the Ballantine Group
paperback, 315 pages
ISBN 0-345-5-42154-X
November, 2001
$6.99 US $9.99 CAN

The sixth in author Ellen Hart’s series featuring food maven, Sophie Greenway, is a delightful, thoroughly entertaining, novel. At the same time, it is a somewhat darker story than some of Hart’s earlier tales.

Drawing on her expertise and experience as a professional cook, Hart places Sophie at the center of a statewide contest to award prizes for outstanding meat loaf recipes. Meat loaf, the ultimate comfort food found all over the Midwest, and in even farther reaches of the land. When trouble strikes, when stress rises to intolerable levels, the creation and consumption of nostalgic foods is almost axiomatic. There is nothing that recalls a simpler more placid time than sitting down to a hot meal of potatoes, brown gravy and meat loaf! The side, probably a green vegetable, is your choice.

So, suggests Sophie, restaurant and food critic for the mythical Times Register of St. Paul, Minnesota, we’ll have a contest to determine some first-rate recipes. Sophie enlists the aid of her friend, the food editor of the paper, Bernice Washburn. So far so good.

With deadlines for determining the winning recipes looming, Bernice has to rush home to Rosehill where her father has been hospitalized with a stroke. Sophie offers to drive Bernice and with that ordinary act of simple kindness becomes emmeshed in dark, convoluted, family relationships that involve bombings, buried treasure, family values, death and surprise after surprise. With her comfortable world collapsing about her, Bernice turns to the submitted meat loaf entries for solace. Steadfast, she creates meat loaf after meat loaf in the family kitchen, even while she tries to sort out her relatives and an importuning lover.

Hart has, in this series and her Jane Lawless books, honed her skills to a high order. She handles plot and subplots with aplomb and a surety that never fails to impress. Readers will delight in the humor, in the thoughtful resolutions, and in the fine writing. Ellen Hart deserves a wide audience for Dial M for Meat Loaf. Three award-winning meat loaf recipes are a bonus.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Carl Brookins - RAM

Book Review: Dial M For Meat Loaf