Street Hungry
A Mystery
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In Street Hungry by Bill Kent, Shep Ladderback, the Philadelphia Press's aged obit writer, mentors the young Andrea (Andy) Cosicki, fledgling journalist and daughter of the late political fixer, Benny the Lunch Cosicki. Ladderback (who knows everything about everyone in the city) wants Andy to cover the death of a street fruit and vegetable salesman, which seems to him to be suspicious.
But Andy has a date for lunch at the Loup Garu, a so-hot-you-can't-get-a-reservation-for-three-months restaurant with a new "culinary concept" (which seems to be horrible food combinations, trumpeted as Transylvanian-Caribbean-fusion) and turns him down. (Ladderback knows that Loup Garu means werewolf; Andy does not.)
But Andy ends up in a big story anyhow, when one of the country's most notable food critics drops dead at her table.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this complex, offbeat mystery, Kent's second (after 2002's Street Money) to feature N.S. "Shep" Ladderback, the agoraphobic obituary writer for the Philadelphia Press, Shep looks into a series of bizarre food-related deaths. First, local fruit and vegetable vendor Sidney "Weight" Wisnitz suddenly keels over at his stand spitting up blood. Next, restaurant critic Michelle Fragg (known as "The Angry Eater") drops dead in a similar fashion at her ex-lover Matt Plank's trendy new Transylvanian/Caribbean "fusion" restaurant, Loup Garou. Shep's assistant, Andrea "Andy" Cosicki, who witnesses Fragg's death, suspects foul play and traces both deaths back to an experimental appetite suppressor produced by Alixxir, a local pharmaceutical company that manufactures cheap knock-offs of brand name drugs. As Shep and Andy dig deeper into the matter, they find similarities with the recent death of Philadelphia mobster Carmen "Chickie" Marandola, whose body was dismembered and hidden all over town (only his pinkie finger was recovered). The truth behind the murders proves to be closer to the two journalists, and to their own pasts, than they could have imagined. Kent explores various notions of hunger the craving for wealth, power, food and sex, among other things in this literate, character-driven crime novel, which straddles the line between hardboiled detective story and thriller. Mystery fans of all stripes should go for it.
