Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2024
224 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
"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.
"Dizzying ... Audiences who wished the TV series The Bear had made room for Russian mobsters are in for a treat." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"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." ―Publishers Weekly
This information about Knife Skills was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Wendy Church, PhD, has authored a variety of nonfiction works, including a PhD dissertation in bioresource engineering, a few textbooks and book chapters on global issues, and a number of inappropriately long Facebook posts about navigating gluten free pizza, and the relationship between yoga and Lord of the Rings. She is the author of the Jesse O'Hara mysteries, the first of which, Murder on the Spanish Seas, was named by Booklist as a Top 10 Debut Mystery & Thriller of 2023. She lives in Seattle, Washington with her partner and several animals.
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