Bruno's Cookbook: Recipes and Traditions from a French Country Kitchen

Bruno, Chief of Police

Bruno's Cookbook: Recipes and Traditions from a French Country Kitchen

Martin Walker, Julia Watson

Recipes used by a fictional small town cop with a penchant for gourmet culinary pursuits. Many of the ingredients are either hard to find outside large cities or too expensive for the average budget. This is French Cuisine at its finest. Most don't have a wild boar or a basset to help find truffles or have a taste for paté de foie gras. I'd never thought of cooking with duck fat--$32 for 11 oz. on Amazon--nor am I ever likely to try. It is interesting to see how the other half eats mind you. These are Jones with whom I have no desire to emulate.

Restaurants with delusions of grandeur tend to use French equivalents to describe their dishes. For example Coulis rather than fruit sauce. Crème Glacée for ice cream. Pomme de Terre Frit for French Fries.

I'm not likely to ever use any of these recipes but the descriptions and chatter are interesting.

r

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Ghost Towns of Ontario Volume 2

Ghost Towns of Ontario Volume 2

Ron Brown

I'm reading the 1989 edition. This outing uses the same publisher as Volume 1 but it's a vast improvement. First of all the cover photo is identified. But more importantly there is a vast improvement in the quality of photo reproduction throughout the book.

The towns described reflect an entrepreneur's exploitation of a natural resource leading to an influx of population which decamps when the resource runs out and the industry folds.

For example much of the storied Algonquin has been logged as many as 5 times and logging still goes on. Pine trees planted in straight rows reflect reforestation lacking in much of Northern Ontario where trees are left in a 200 ft band along highways for appearance sake.

Ghost towns are testimony to human greed. Lakes and rivers were fished to the point that the fish were unable to reproduce; forests were clear-cut with no thought to second growth, mines were run with the objective of maximizing ore production and profits, not sustainable employment. When the resource ran out the owners left with their ill-gotten wealth.

The Sleeping Giant must be viewed from 35 mile's distance in Thunderbay. If you spend the night on the peninsula stay considerable distance from the diesel generator. Silver Islet is a 20 mile drive from the park entrance. I've looked across the lake at the islet. If you think the hardships faced by the silver miners exaggerated consider that the day in June I hiked with a group to the top of the giant's head it snowed.

The picture caption on p. 83 lists Ophir as North-East of the Sault. The map on p. 33 plainly shows it South-East. A modern day map shows it due East.

The road to Cobalt as with the road to Durango, CO is the million dollar highway in this case due to the silver in the tailings used to build it. In all more than 460 million ounces of silver were pulled out of mines in the hills surrounding the area or as the author puts it $5 worth for every person in Canada at one point.

Parks Ontario offers historical brochures showing beautiful sketches of heritage buildings that once graced its parks. Often the sad truth is that the MNR has razed and burned those buildings. This wanton destruction of Ontario Heritage is a frequent wail in documenting former Ghost Towns.

The book makes rather depressing reading.

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The Shooting at Chateau Rock

Bruno, Chief of Police #13

The Shooting at Chateau Rock

Martin Walker

Bruno is still busy in his kitchen and enjoying others' culinary efforts and in this outing, #13, coaching tennis.

A wealthy old man dies under suspicious circumstances but it's hard to determine cause of death when the body has been cremated and the ashes scattered. So Bruno is looking for possible motivating factors for murder rather than heart attack.

Yes, these are murder mysteries but Bruno's social life occupies the greater part of the story. Given his taste in wines and gourmet foods it would seem he has an excellent salary.

When international intrigue get involved justice gets short shrift to political expediency. This begins to sound more like a Le Carré spy thriller.

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Brothers Three

Brothers Three

C.W. James

Three orphaned brothers struggle to protect what is theirs, their ranch, against the elements and those who would wrest it from them.

Allen is the eldest and at 17 their leader in the absence of their Uncle and legal guardian whom the lure of gold has off who knows where.

Paul is the quiet cerebral reader.

Chet is the athletic impulsive younger brother.

The text needs a good editor.

This may be an Western Action Adventure Novel but the trio are either accident prone or lurch from disaster to disaster. This is a young adult novel at best with a rather simplistic plot. It ends with a shoot-out that leaves a great deal unfinished. Will there be a sequel?

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Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain

Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain

Andrew McCarthy

In the first place Andrew is divorced from Sam's Mother.

This is a picaresque novel in which nineteen-year-old Sam joins his middle-aged (58) father on Andrew's Second Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage in Northern Spain. The memoir is told from Andrew's point of view. Hearing about it from Sam would be revealing. In part Andrew hopes to establish an adult relationship with his child on this walk.

The Bruce Trail has end to enders as does the Appalachian Trail and now the Trans Canada Trail and Pacific Ridge Trail. Chaucer's Pilgrims in Canterbury Tales go from pub to pub about 6 miles apart. The hikers on the afore-mentioned trails go backpacking in more primitive conditions. The Camino is a religious pilgrimage in part supported by monasteries and churches along the way. Since the trail has some forty daily sections and sufficient pilgrims an entire industry has developed in supplying their needs and wants. Memorabilia being only a part of the business. Rather than stay in the dormitories provided Andrew stays at commercial inns. What kind of marks he leaves behind as he rests his elevated dogs against the walls....

Sam's is obviously not a religious pilgrimage. His language is X-Rated. The pair compare Andrew's druggy past and Sam's present encounters. Sam smokes. Modern day urban teens lack the kind of chores their country cousins had to get out of bed early to perform. Rather than lay abed until 10 AM it would make sense to me to get up early and walk in the cool of the day and take a siesta during the heat of the day as the locals do. Mad dogs and Englishmen stay out in the noon day sun. When I travelled by RV I often left before dawn to beat the heat, city traffic, and winds that often developed later in the day. Early to bed and early to rise. Bad habits are hard to break.

As the pair wind down their travels they meet more and more fellow pilgrims including one who taxis from rest stop to rest stop. Bikers seem to think the pathway is theirs and fail to ride nearby roads. Sam blunders into those roadways plugged into music and oblivious to danger.

The final days are marked by day hikers and tourists. Overworked attendants churlish and rude. The final arrival is anti-climatic most of the rites of passage no longer possible due to overuse. Attendance at the Cathedral is overbooked.

Sam is a bit of a klutz whose school experience was marked by learning difficulties. He is late to bed and slow to rise and has a nicotine habit. As much as I'd have liked to have heard about the pilgrimage from Sam's perspective his authoring them seems unlikely.

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Home to Big Stone Gap

Big Stone Gap #4

Home to Big Stone Gap

Adriana Trigiani

I bought the first book in this series probably after reading a review in the Saturday Star back in 2000 when it came out in mass market paperback. I was taken by the author's unique turn of phrase and read book 2 when it too arrived a year later and bought book 3 in 2002 but didn't read it until this year. I'd had a surfeit of the author's machinations.

It wasn't until ten years later that I discovered Romances about the same time I discovered e-books. And it wasn't until just now that I discovered this author is a major contributor to the genre having written series totalling over 30 books.

In audiobook format these books are an excellent cure for insomnia.

As the title suggests Ava and Jack have returned home to the Blue Ridge after witnessing their 18-yr-old daughter's marriage in Italy. Ava in particular is struck by the silence that ensues from being an empty nester. Her daughter had occupied a great deal of space in her life that is now void even though the worry continues.

Were these women in Trinity, NFLD the dunking chair for gossiping wives would have been in full use. We get recipes including ingredients and method for several repasts somewhat lost on the audiobook. We get a Christmas Reunion that includes her paramour and the story slowly grinds to a close. Ava runs a pharmacy.

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The Body in the Castle Well

Bruno, Chief of Police #12

The Body in the Castle Well

Martin Walker

Bruno's personalized approach to policing still holds here but he doesn't seem to be able to prevent his clients from killing one another. In this case a visiting doctoral student in French Art is the victim found in the well. While he sifts through the suspects Bruno continues to go for rides on Hector accompanied by his Basset Balzac and indulge in epicurean delights. Not sure I'm interested in trying Pate de Foie Gras and truffles nor do I favour caviar and given the price just as well. Cooking with duck fat?

The author has done a great deal of research. The political machinations of Vichy France, of which this region was a part, get quite an airing. And since the victim was researching art history we learn that the Nazis were not the first regime to engage in art thievery. Seems Napoleon was an art collector as well and he didn't buy it. It's one thing that old masters employed their students in finishing the mundane backgrounds of their famous works but there's an entire industry in art forgery. Authenticating the provenience of a work of art calls for experts in the field.

The victim here comes from money.

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The Overlook

Harry Bosch #13

The Overlook

Michael Connelly

When a nuclear medicine specialist is found murdered, execution style Harry is called in to investigate but it quickly becomes an ABC affair when cesium is found missing. Not one of his better cases.Titled after the lookout where the body is found.

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The Closers

Harry Bosch #11

The Closers

Michael Connelly

Harry is back on the job and working on cold cases with his old partner. Examining Cold Cases often reveals shoddy police work or officers who take the easy pathway.

This outing is a police procedural that reminds me of Dragnet without the crime solved in half an hour. Virtually nothing of a personal nature enters the story.

Unlike Harry's other cases this one doesn't emphasize psychological profiling and motivation but instead concentrates on the nitty gritty of record keeping and paperwork involved in police work. The kind of paperwork that sees offenders walking free before the arresting cop has finished the paperwork involved. In particular he talks about the murderbook that records chronology and all the minutia of the investigation. In this case after 17 years the box containing the physical evidence had been accidentally or deliberately lost.

There is the innuendo that Deputy Chief Irving is somehow implicated in covering up police corruption here. The case was conducted by the book but the actual perpetrator was never identified though possibly buried in all the details.

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