Knife Skills
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $0.99
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
"Dizzying . . . Audiences who wished the TV series The Bear had made room for Russian mobsters are in for a treat" Kirkus Reviews Starred Review
Sagarine Pfister is a great cook but has been blacklisted by almost every restaurant in Chicago. She gets her chance at Louie’s, a below-average restaurant, the only place that will give her a job.
Things change when she finds head chef Louie Ferrar dead in the walk-in freezer of his restaurant. But instead of closing the place down, the owner, Russian gang boss Anatoly Morzov, not only offers her Louie’s job, but also the position as his personal chef. Sagarine agrees, and while she knows she’s playing with fire, the chance to turn out extraordinary food at both the restaurant and for Morzov’s extravagant private parties is just too tempting.
While the Chicago P.D. searches for Louie’s killer, the FBI pressures Sagarine to inform on the gang. She has no choice, but things take another dangerous turn when she falls for one of Morzov’s lieutenants. As Sagarine becomes more deeply involved with the gang and with her lover, the FBI’s demands put her at increased risk of discovery. She has to make a decision about where her loyalties lie as she finds herself running for her life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this tasty series opener, Church (the Jesse O'Hara series) introduces 20-something Chicago chef Sagarine Pfister, who quickly gets tangled up in the Windy City's criminal underworld. One evening, Sagarine arrives at work to find her boss, executive chef Louie Ferrar, dead in the kitchen's walk-in freezer. With an important private party—including Anatoly Morzov, the restaurant's Russian crime boss owner—arriving shortly, Sagarine covers the body with a tablecloth and returns to the kitchen. Keeping Louie's death on the back burner, she delivers such a successful meal that Anatoly invites her to permanently take over as executive chef and cater his own private events. The police, when they finally arrive after a call from the restaurant's host, consider Sagarine's promotion a sufficient motive for murder, and promptly add her to the suspect list. Meanwhile, FBI Special Agent Smith offers to leave Sagarine's drug-addicted sex worker sister alone if Sagarine informs on Anatoly and his crew—which would be dangerous enough if Sagarine wasn't also falling for one of the gang's high-ranking members. With brisk pacing and dynamic characters, Church keeps readers enthralled as her plot spins into violent territory, and successfully conceals a doozy of a twist that sends the series in an unexpected direction. Readers will be hungry for Church to cook up a sequel.
