Beat Until Stiff

Rating:
Summary: An unusually frank view of the cooking and restaurant scene
Review: Claire M. Johnson's Beat Until Stiff deserves enthusiastic mention as a very special title which offers an unusually frank view of the cooking and restaurant scene in San Francisco. Herself a professional and experienced pastry chef, Claire Johnson presents the reader with a lively style that mixes autobiography with culinary and social insights. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: What a charming book!
Review: I am truly surprised that this was the author's first book. I read a lot and can usually tell when its a first try. I really enjoyed this book and read it in one sitting. I hope she writes more!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I found the first fourteen chapters intriguing but then somehow oddly enough my enthusiam waned as I languished toward the PREDICTABLE end of the book. The references to food at first were cute and refreshing but after a while got tiring and boring. The protagonist's bitter dialogue dragged on and on, it seemed, forever. This book is not bad for a new writer. Though, I do admit with all of the positive reviews I read before purchasing the book and hearing the author in person at the San Francisco Public Library reading an excerpt of the book, I expected a better read.

Rating:
Summary: Not typical of "light mystery"
Review: I gave this book a five star rating because I am a big fan of light mysteries, the characters being thrown into a homicide investigation, the books with cooks, store owners, moms.....but this one I felt was really different. It was actually a little darker than most, a light mystery with an edge. Everything wasn't so wrapped up, no pat ending.
I look forward to the next in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous first mystery -- culinary too!
Review: Mary Ryan, pastry chef at American Fare -- the hottest restaurant on the West Coast, is 34, recently divorced from Jim, a San Francisco homicide inspector, and cranky.

Getting a chef's jacket and apron from the laundry room of the deserted restaurant, she steps on a laundry bag. It feels hard, not spongy like a bag of dirty laundry. She opens the bag with her chef's knife and finds Carlos Perez, one of her pastry assistants, beaten to death and neatly folded into the laundry bag. After she throws up and hides in the bathroom to make sure whoever killed him has left, she calls 911.

O'Connor, Jim's partner and a friend, is assigned to this case. Mary disobeys O'Connor and puts herself in danger time and time again. But she also helps uncover what has been going on under her nose. Many secrets of the food business at American Fare are uncovered.

I found Mary Ryan to be a likeable character even though her life is dysfunctional at best.

If you like food and mysteries, you will like this debut novel. I am looking forward to reading future books.

Rating:
Summary: A very admirable first effort
Review: Mary Ryan, pastry chef at the trendy American Fare Restaurant in San Francisco, makes a grizzly discovery while alone at the restaurant in the early morning. She steps on a trash bag which contains a body of a fellow worker. The fact that she has made the discovery places her at the center of the investigation. Leading the investigation is O'Connor, the former partner of Mary's ex-husband. He gives her the inside track on the progression of the investigation. As much as O'Connor entreats Mary to stay out of police matters, Mary always seems to find trouble--including a couple more dead bodies.
I liked this formulaic amateur PI debut novel. The characters are engaging, the setting of San Francisco well utilized and the author's occupation as a pastry chef of interest. Ms. Johnson also manages to keep the length just long enough to contain the well paced plot, yet, short enough to be read in one evening. In future books I would like more inside information about the restaurant industry. This is often the only thing that separates these amateur PI novels-- the occupation of the main character. Ms. Johnson should definitely avoid the timeworn device of the villain holding the hero hostage at the end with a gun while divulging all. Otherwise a very admirable first effort.

Rating:
Summary: delicious culinary mystery
Review: Pastry chef Mary Ryan graduated from the Ecole d'Epicure cooking school and found a great job working at American Fare, the top restaurant on the west coast and considered by gourmands to be one of the top three restaurants in the country. She should be very happy since she loves to cook but her divorce turned her into an acrimonious, emotionally upset person.

Her attitude goes downhill when she arrives early for work only to find the corpse of pastry assistant Carlos Perez stuffed in a laundry bag. Besides the shock of discovery, Mary has no clue why anyone would kill him. When the owner of the restaurant also turns up dead, the victim of a homicide, Mary starts asking questions to see if the two deaths are connected and almost winds up as victim number three.

BEAT UNTIL STIFF is a delicious culinary mystery that shouldn't be eaten on an empty stomach because the food descriptions will make the reader ravenously hungry. Despite being upset about her divorce, the audience will take the heroine into their hearts because she is really vulnerable and in "kneed" of kindness. Though why she turned sleuth chef even to insure her own safety seems questionable, Claire M. Johnson shows a lot of writing talent as she bakes a mystery epicure's delight.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Nice, but with a little too much self-pity
Review: Since her husband left her for another woman, Mary Ryan has sunk herself into the 16 hour days of a restaurant pastry chef. But when she arrives early one morning and stumbles over the dead body of one of the wait staff, she is yanked from her lethargy and feels compelled to investigate--despite clear warnings from cop ex-husband Jim and Jim's former partner, O'Connor. Mary's search takes her all over San Francisco and she gradually uncovers evidence that the murder is more than random violence. Something is going on at the restaurant where she works--something that may put her in grave danger.

Author Claire M. Johnson delivers a well written story in her debut novel, BEAT UNTIL STIFF--and what a killer title. I took a while to warm to Mary Ryan, the protagonist as he full emersion in self-pity quickly wore thin and her motivation for investigation seemed a bit shaky. Still, it's hard not to like a 30-something woman determined to make it in the rough world of food service, and determined to uncover the truth about the death of a friend.

Johnson's view of the restaurant world, with its base of immigrants, self-obsessed prima-donna chefs, gay creative talents, and wine tasting parties rings true as does her city of San Francisco.

Rating:
Summary: A great first mystery!
Review: What a fun book! Great characters, great locations, great everything! This is a quick read, I couldn't put it down! Please please please Ms. Johnson, write more....quickly!