Little Indiscretions

When Nestor Chaffinch, pastry cook to the rich and famous, is found frozen to death in the cold room of Ernesto Teldi's summer mansion with a notebook in his hand, the party guests gathered that evening are shaking in their shoes. As a private chef to the upper classes, Nestor knew too much about them. Ernesto Teldi, owner of the mansion, has a variety of political skeletons in his cupboard; Adela, his wife is a closet adulterer; Serafin Tous, the judge, dallies with young boys, while spoilt rich kid Chloe is anguished by her brother's accidental death, for which she blames herself. Nestor himself had some secrets up his sleeve, one of which is a little book of perfect puddings he has been collecting all his life. But the guests in the house fear this book contains much more than a mere list of naughty desserts. But would any of them go so far as to knock off the chef for what he might know about their pasts? Could his undignified death in the cold room be just a complete accident? A pastry-light concoction of crime and clairvoyance - this wicked whodunnit by Carmen Posadas is literary detective fiction at its most satisfying.