Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1915 Auguste Lupa, a mysterious 25-year-old chef, is asked to join the weekly homemade-beer-and-conversation sessions of undercover French spy Jules Giraud, who is on the trail of a master German saboteur with designs on the nearby armory in St. Etienne. At Lupa's first meeting with Giraud's group, a member is killed with poisoned beer. Convinced that this murder is the work of the German spy, Giraud enlists Lupa in finding the culprit. An attempt is made on Lupa's life, the armory is blown up, and the probity of the chef himself is questioned by the police before he brings all the suspects together for a confrontation and unmasking. Detection fans will probably spot the villain early in this medium-weight puzzler. But they will lap up the details of Lupa's possible heritage, and with his brilliance, devotion to food, flowers, books, beer and the color yellow, it's soon plain that the chef is really the young Nero Wolfe. It has been suggested before that Wolfe was Sherlock Holmes's son, and this will be all the delicious ``proof'' that Wolfe fans need. Lescroart's first novel was Sunburn. (April 10) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The 25-year-old son of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, an American-born secret agent named Auguste Lupa, fingers a German spy in WW 1 France--according to this thin, talky narrative, the supposed memoirs (rediscovered in 1983) of long-dead Jules Giraud, a wealthy French land-owner/agent. Lupa, posing as a super-chef, comes to Valence in 1915 on the trail of an anonymous German agent, ""the brains behind Europe's assassinations for two years."" He teams up with the two local Allied agents, Giraud and traveling salesman Marcel Routier. But, during a social evening at Giraud's, Routier dies from poisoned beer. So the killer/spy must be one of the guests at that small gathering: an American poet, a Greek shopowner, an Alsatian salesman, Giraud himself, or Giraud's lovely mistress, widowed neighbor Tania. And after a few more nasty assaults (and the bombing of a local arsenal), Lupa--the primary suspect of the foolish local police, of course--gathers all the suspects together to unmask the unsurprising culprit. As mystery, then, this is unusally tepid, thoroughly humorless fare. As an exercise in Sherlockiana, it's only slightly more flavorsome: Lupa makes a few coy references to his parents; and there are dozens of cute hints-the name Lupa, his interest in haute cuisine, a young Swiss chef named Fritz, etc., etc.--about the future identity of Auguste Lupa in mystery fiction. (Even casual Baker Street Irregulars will be familiar with his hoary son-of-Holmes theory. And Nero Wolfe buffs will have much more fun with Goldsborough, above.) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
