Bobby Gold Stories - Hardcover

Author Anthony Bourdain is a talented chef whose two previous thrillers (Bone in the Throat, Gone Bamboo) were seasoned with the kind of culinary details that delighted the Food Channel-loving fans of his successful nonfiction books. The foodies will slaver over a wonderfully wrought scene in his latest caper novel--it's set at a chic Manhattan restaurant where a gourmand gangster with a picky palate turns the chef's menu upside down and stiffs the poor waiter who has to accommodate him. But the rest of this otherwise slight and unseasoned novel doesn't live up to that wonderful appetizer. Its protagonist is Bobby Gold, an ex-con who works as a security guard at Eddie Fish's Nightclub and is involved with a sexy sous-chef named Nikki whose preparation of a special meal for her lover reads like Bourdain's version of foreplay. But when Nikki rips off the restaurant receipts and Bobby gets on the wrong side of a mob plan to kill Eddie's appetite for good while recouping the money, Bourdain's plotting goes sour and the ending fails to satisfy. Still, it's a nice side dish to go with a good cookbook, or even one of the author's zany true stories of what goes on behind the swinging doors of many real-life restaurants (Kitchen Confidential, A Cook's Tour). --Jane Adams

Praise for Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo:
"Bourdain establishes himself as a new master of the wiseass crime comedy. A potentially routine mob caper is brought to life by tight plotting, appealing characters and a stylish mix of irony, snappy dialogue and amoral verve."-Publishers Weekly
"Bourdain's prose is utterly riveting, swaggering with stylish machismo." -New York Magazine
"...irresistible..." -Booklist
"Deliciously depraved." -The New York Times Book Review