Charmed as I was by Sally Andrew’s first novel, Recipes for Love and Murder, I was looking forward to her second mystery, also set in the Klein Karoo of South Africa and featuring Tannie Maria, a middle-aged widow who likes to cook and eat.
Tannie Maria is still writing an advice and recipe column for the Klein Karoo Gazette and her romance with Detective Henk Kannemeyer has progressed to the point where her editor refers to Henk as ‘your detective’. She goes to the Klein Karoo arts festival, where a charismatic San (Bushman) lands-right organizer is murdered before her eyes. And what’s more, he was poisoned! The food connection is right up Tannie Maria’s alley.
Her personal life is not going as well, though. PTSD and secrets from the years of living with her brutal husband have left Tannie Maria traumatized, unable to have sex with Henk. She goes to a counsellor who recommends diet pills. She also joins a group-therapy session led by the ‘Satanic Mechanic’ of the title. And in their second therapy meeting, another murder takes place.
It’s a good start to a novel, and this one too has its charming asides. Kosie the lamb appears frequently.
The lamb was a gift from Henk’s uncle Koos, the sheep farmer, and was not meant to be a pet.
Some of the other local colour seems rather forced and unimaginative:
A breeze picked up and brought with it a sweet, unusual smell. I looked around for what it might be and saw a patch of gray-green bushes with flowers of little yellow balls. The smell filled my nostrils and tickled the back of my throat on its way down to my lungs. It was something like lemons but was also sweet like honey.
The plot revolves around the San struggle for control over their ancestral lands, and the background is very briskly dealt with in a short chapter. The Bushmen have won a rare legal victory, and the agribusiness and mining industries are not happy.
“These companies were both after the nature reserve beside the Kuruman River, which has now been awarded to the Bushmen as their ancestral lands,” Hattie explained.
But short shrift is given to any background or historical context, because the very next sentence is:
The talk of Kuruman made me think of Tannie Kuruman from the Route 62 Cafe and her excellent chicken pies.
Indeed, this is something of a foreshadowing: the plot is haphazard, and Tannie Maria’s cooking and recipes are more prominent than the crime itself. The solution is rushed and simplistic.
In the first novel, Detective Henk Kannemeyer was, in Tannie Maria’s eyes, a dreamy hunk. In this, he continues to be pretty much perfect — devoted to her, very appreciative of her cooking and appearance — until he displays an annoyingly macho habit of wanting to control and protect her. The descriptions of him are rather repetitive:
He smelled like fresh bread and cinnamon, and honey from the beeswax on his mustache. (p3).
His warm chest smelled like a hot cross bun (p80)
I breathed in the smell of him. Something like earth and cinnamon. (p144)
Henk is far less interesting than Jessie, the energetic ‘colored’ investigative journalist who is in a relationship with (white) Seargent Reghardt. I would have liked to read more about Jessie, but didn’t get much more than periodic (and again, repetitive) mentions of how she stroked her gecko tattoo as she thought.
There is still enough in the novel to like, but not a lot to love.
For much of the novel, Tannie Maria sees a large kudu antelope with deep black eyes following her around: she knows this kudu does not really exist, but the explanation for it near the end of the book was nicely realistic.
As before, I enjoyed the casual Afrikaans-isms:
“See you later, bokkie.”
“Jirre, this rusk is good.”
“Dessert. Oh, lekker”
A pleasant read, but a disappointing followup to Recipes for Love and Murder.
Your title is brilliant! And yes, agree this one was not as satisfying as the first, mainly as you point out because less well plotted/crafted, and it doesn’t all hang together as well or tidily. The characters were still lovely and charming. And the recipies and focus on food always delightful. But the stories in the background were patchy rather than flowing and coherent. Still though, I admit I am already anticipating the 3rd novel!