The Ariel Quigley Mysteries  and Accompanying Cookbooks

Perusing The Novels

     The Chef Who Died Sautéing is the first mystery in a series featuring Ariel Quigley, a young English instructor who talks to ghosts, reads tarot cards, and has precognitive dreams. In the first book she finds herself embroiled in an abortive bombing, a suspicious death, a car accident that is no accident, and a hurricane. (Is nature a terrorist agent?)  She does Tarot readings for fun, but learns a lot about the people around her from the cards. And in the course of unraveling the clues she also learns the truth about the death of a slave who died before the Civil War—from the ghost herself.  

     Early in the book Ariel moves in with her friend Bernice Wise, a psychotherapist with a large Colonial house in Alexandria, Virginia, college-age twins—and a resident ghost from the pre-Civil War era, whose murder Ariel uncovers.

     Bernice introduces Ariel to the crew at the Riviera, a nearby French restaurant, where the famous chef Daniel Lafayette creates magic with food while the waiters entertain the guests with Monty Python humor. The head waiter takes a shine to Ariel and asks her out. But before their romance can begin to bud, he becomes the victim of an abortive bombing, chef Daniel is found dead, and the maitre d’ hotel of the restaurant is injured in a car accident that is clearly no accident. Is someone out to destroy the staff of the Riviera?

     Though the medical examiner says the chef died of a heart attack, Ariel has a psychic experience that causes her to believe it was a poisoning, and in passing on this information, she finds herself in the company of an attractive police sergeant. In a climax complicated by the arrival of Hurricane Isabel, Ariel is taken at knife point to the cemetery where chef Daniel was buried, and she must fight for her own life with skill and cunning.