Cook's Night Out: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (Angie Amalfi Mysteries)

by Joanne Pence

Book Overview

Foodie Angie Amalfi has decided to make her culinary name by creating the perfect chocolate confection: angelinas. Donating her delicious rejects to the Random Acts of Kindness Mission in San... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061043966
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 0.8" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

Baffling Betrayal; Paavo/Serpico; Angie/Chaplin

Even if there were nothing else in the book, the evolving intrigue in the character of the reverend would surge my interest through the book. Is he a good guy; is he a con artist? Is he a comical, off-brand, visiting deity, a spinnoff of little guy in the movie, with the cigar and the Brooklyn accent? Pence must have been giggling as she was typing, tweaking this character's fun fluctuations. I relished every flicker of sunlight and shadow, all the way to the end of the story, which sizzled with a more creative resolution of Reverend Hodge than many writers could have conjured. In this plot, Paavo was forced to dredge the depths of his self-esteem sludge, plummeting to the hairy roots of his professional position, fighting like Serpico against internal corruption, presenting a foil against Angie's continued dedication to his soul balance. I particularly liked the scene around this quote from Paavo, on page 105 of this mass market paperback version: "I'm foul-tempered, I have a season in hell for a job, I don't have the time to give you what you deserve or the money to spend on you that I'd like to. Now I'm even losing my good name around the hall-for whatever that was worth." The tempering prose surrounding that quote is exquisitely touching. It's worth taking time to note the wholeness of that scene when you read this novel. The scene exposes how a true author dramatizes sensitivity and charges emotions without being too gooey or too superficial. Returning to the reverend and his Random Acts of Kindness mission, I'll note that I enjoyed the unique way Pence dealt with charity, and religious fads and foibles. Similarly to her sensitive exposure of various angles of New Age guru-ery in COOKING UP TROUBLE, she exposes here not only the preponderance of phoney cover-ups and criminally self-serving "charitable" acts; she also dramatizes how easy it can be for very normal people to want to be part of a soup kitchen type of giving. Angie's continued all-out support of Paavo, without losing a Quantum or Quark of her personal integrity, develops further in this plot as she chooses to remain within a bad situation in Hodge's program, going against Paavo's repeated demands that she stay away from there. The way both Angie and Paavo deal with this conflict and its resulting tension is creatively realistic. If you want the cozy "same ole routine" which we all look for in genre expectations, you'll get satisfaction from Pence's series. But you'll get more than you hoped for, because Pence's talent pushes her to take the "norm," do justice to it, then spin it around in a fast circle in her mind until something uniquely, honestly refreshing takes shape in a slightly shifting surprise. This # 5 in the series does that slight surprise a bit more than the other books, especially in resolutions of ongoing questions about, is it/he/she "this way" or "that way" ... a good or bad guy or deal? The twists are so numerous they become entertainin

Very Entertaining

I'm not quite finished the book, but I couldn't wait to do a review of it. It was very good. It kept you going with trying to find out what was happening and how. It also kept you entertained with some of the things that happened with Angie and Connie. I am thoroughly enjoying this book (the first I have read from this author). I will definitely be picking up her others.

Another delightful work in this exciting and humerous series

Gourmet chef Angelina Amalfi is tired of her cooking career going nowhere. She decides to remedy that problem by creating the most irresistible chocolate the world has ever tasted, the angelinas. However, her experiments result in many delicious but rejected chocolates that she donates to the Random Acts of Kindess Mission. She also agrees to help with the mission's upcoming charity auction. As Angelina's career hopefully takes off, her lover, San Francisco police officer Paavo Smith, watches his own vocation fall apart. On one case, murder evidence mysteriously disappears leading to the freeing of an obvious killer. This is followed up with the murder of a numbers runner who carries Paavo's phone number on him. The internal affairs department begins to wonder if they have a dirty cop to deal with. However, residing at the mission is a lifetime enemy of Paavo, who plans to destroy the cop by starting with his reputation. It is up to Angelina to not only save her lover's professional credibility, but his life as well.. The fifth novel, THE COOK'S NIGHT OUT, in the delightfully delicious Angelina Amalfi series is a reader's gourmet delight due to the escapades of the lead female protagonist. Paavo is a great character and San Francisco is always a star attraction. The romantic suspense story line is filled with intrigue. The four previous books in Joanne Pence's collection are being released one at a time, starting in February and any fan of romantic suspense needs to read them because they are some of the best books of the nineties. Harriet Klausner