Beat Until Stiff: A Mary Ryan Mystery

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!

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.

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.

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!