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Knife Skills For Beginners by Orlando Murrin

Food writer by trade, Orlando Murrin brings us his own mystery novel, Knife Skills For Beginners. And it begins, where else — but in a cooking school! Murrin’s own love of crime, mystery and cooking are skillfully sifted together in this exceptional standout mystery. Murrin’s style is all his own and you gotta love it!

Former celebrity Chef Christian teaches the classes at The Chester Square Cookery School in London. Rose Hoyt is the school’s owner and resides at the school. The school is housed in an ornate stately mansion, that frankly, has seen better days (just like Chef Christian). Overnight accommodations are provided to the students for the duration of the cooking sessions.

When Christian has an unfortunate accident and breaks his arm, he convinces his friend, Chef Paul Delamare, to help him with the classes. The 8 students are quite an assorted crew. One of them is a friend of the owner. Another student seems to be harboring a grudge against Christian. It also becomes obvious some of the female students seem to have a serious infatuation with the charismatic chef – and to his credit, Chef Christian has always been “a ladies man!”

There’s also a flamboyant social influencer in the mix and a young wanna-be chef who suffers from lack of confidence. Paul also can’t help but notice that another student is a bride-to-be, but she sure isn’t happy about it. How odd indeed! But as the class starts cooking, someone is literally sharpening their knife skills and it isn’t long before one of them winds up dead in a seriously gruesome manor.

As most true crime and mystery lovers know, the person who discovers the body is usually put on the police “hot seat.” In this case, it’s poor Chef Paul who is both blindsided and appalled that he, of all people, could even be considered a suspect. But as Paul becomes a “catch and release” victim of the police, he tries to fit the pieces of the ghastly crime together to get them off his back.

While he ferrets out secrets from the victim’s past, he discovers some of his students are being less than truthful. Reality creeps in: he’s being framed. In the midst of it all, Paul is also dealing with a stalker from his past, creating chaos and threatening his livelihood. And things are about to get even rougher!

Knife Skills for Beginners is a twisty whodunit that is witty, snarky and so well done, folks will be hoping Orlando Murrin is working on another book. Murrin has his own very distinct style that sets this apart from other traditional mysteries.

A copy of this book and cover photo were provided by: Kensington Publishing