My Weekly Book

The Food Detective - Judith Cutler

Coming across books like this is one of the best reasons for belonging to your local library. It’s a detective novel by a very well-established writer that’s got a really distinctive voice and a heroine who you end up hoping might invite you round for Sunday lunch. Josie Welford’s a no-nonsense Brummie lady (of a certain age) with Gypsy blood just a couple of generations back. She’s survived marriage to a gangster followed by a long spell on her own while he was a guest of Her Majesty. Now he’s dead of cancer and Josie, who knows full well where the cash is hidden, is benefiting from a ferocious diet regime and a new incarnation as a publican and restauranteur. That means relocating to a village on the fringes of Exmoor that makes Royston Vasey look about as metropolitan as Seattle, taking flying lessons and availing herself of any nice little opportunities (for example, personable ex-RAF flying instructors or osteopaths who are very good with their hands) who might just chance along.

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And it’s all looking like a nice little prospect until she starts to ask loud, uncomfortable questions of her meat supplier, tells the regulars not to grope the teenage bar staff and finds that the copper who sent her old man away has turned up in a new incarnation as a food inspector living in a mobile home at the local caravan park. As the suspicious locals boycott her pub, send her to Coventry, persecute her staff, dump offal on her doorstep and generally develop an increasingly strong resemblance to the occupants of Gormenghast, Josie gets the chance to show us what she’s made of.

Fictional women being what they so often are, and especially in crime novels, she’s such a breath of fresh air. She’s strong-willed, opinionated, talented, unafraid, formerly fat and I would guess nudging pretty close to fifty. She’s bolshie, independent and incorrigibly nosy, plus her ex-husband and his henchmen have taught her all sorts of useful skills like handling firearms and doing stunt driving, all very handy for an amateur detective. There’s a good plot that doesn’t fully unfold until the last few pages and a strong authorial voice that made reading this a pleasure. Great fun all round and a good introduction, I would say, to this author’s work.

Some links:

• The author’s website
• An interview with Judith Cutler
• Birmingham UK: Judith Cutler
• The geography of the novel

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 6:54 pm and is filed under 2006 reading challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.