MURDER IN THE SMOKEHOUSE

It's 1901, and master chef/sometime sleuth Auguste Didier is honeymooning in England with his Romanov princess bride Tatiana (Murder Makes an Entree, 1996, etc.). The two have been invited to Yorkshire for a weekend at Tabor Hall, home of the high-society Tabor family, with King Edward in attendance, to celebrate the engagement of Victoria Tabor to Tatiana's cousin Alexander Tully- Rich. Lady Priscilla Tabor, an ahead-of-her-time antismoking fanatic, banishes cigar fanciers to an outbuilding called the Smokehouse. It's there, late on Saturday night, that a man's body is found, shot to death—his identity a mystery. After the King quietly exits the scene, Didier, between forays to the kitchen, where the family cook presides over typical Yorkshire fare, gives what help he can to old friend Chief Inspector Rose of Scotland Yard. False trails abound as Lady Priscilla, her husband Baron George, his mother the Dowager Lady Miriam, his sister Laura, and her would-be suitor Oliver Carstairs, among others, are questioned at tiresome length, even as other avenues are being explored. The answers, when they finally arrive, have roots in a long-hidden past. Didier, whose patrician wife has decided to become an auto mechanic, must also confront a personal threat from Pyotr Gregorin, a relative of Tatiana's, enraged by her marriage to a commoner. Good-natured nonsense heavily embroidered with fancy prose, cooking lore, Yorkshire eccentrics, local accents, and crazed aristocrats. Patient readers with a fondness for the period may enjoy. For others, a tangled web laced with tedium.