Cook's Night Out (Angie Amalfi Mysteries)

Rating:
Summary: Another delightful work in this exciting and humerous series
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Very Entertaining
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A nice read, but nothing really to write home about
Review: Since I got this book as a present, I could not start with the first book in the series (as I would normally do with any series) and had to jump right in the middle. Although it is already the fifth book in this series, I don't feel that I have missed much not having read the previous four books. Don't get me wrong: it is an entertaining read after a hard, long day (because you don't have to use your brain much), but the villain was simply too obvious, Angelina's attempts at becoming a chocolatier were half-heartedly (at least to me) and there are too many attempts in this book to make it seem like a Diane Mott Davidson-novel....without any recepies and without much success, however. At times I had the impression that Paavo Smith is the main-character of this book and not Angelina Amalfi. Angelina seemed more like a supporting character to me. If you are into Mystries including recipies better get the Goldy Schulz-series by Dianne Mott Davidson (far better) or the PennDutch-series by Tamar Myers (hilariously funny).