The Devil's Feast
2017 • 432 pages
Ratings2
Average rating4
15
Ratings2
Average rating4
Investigative team Blake and Avery find themselves entangled in a case involving political conflicts, personal vendettas, and England’s first celebrity chef. London, 1842. Captain William Avery is persuaded to investigate a mysterious and horrible death at the Reform, London’s newest and grandest gentleman’s club—a death the club is desperate to hush up. What he soon discovers is a web of rivalries and hatreds, both personal and political, simmering behind the club’s handsome façade. At the center is its resident genius, Alexis Soyer, “the Napoleon of food,” a chef whose culinary brilliance is matched only by his talent for self-publicity. But Avery is distracted, for where is his mentor and partner in crime Jeremiah Blake? And what if this first death is only a dress rehearsal for something far more sinister?
Reviews with the most likes.
I listened to the complete Avery & Blake series, wonderfully narrated by Sam Dastor, in 10 days. Sorry, if this maybe will offend the admirable Miranda Carter, who must have laboured over these books, as a lot of research went into them. I love the two opposing characters of Avery & Blake. However, Avery sometimes seems a bit too innocent and blundering. The atmospheric depiction of India in the first book and 19th-century London in the last two, gives you a taste of the awful British class system and how the upper classes treated the oppressed and needy. The ‘sleuthing' parts of the stories were exciting and sometimes even surprising, but it was the historical background that kept me engaged. I do hope there will be more Avery & Balke stories and I hope they will return to India, as Sam Dastor's voice is so very well suited to narrate Indian material.
