What do we call gastronomic crime novel or gastro noir? If it existed as a subgenre of detective novels, when and how did this writing style emerge?
Montse Clavé in the book Practical manual of black and criminal cuisine (Allende Books) wrote: “The black and criminal bookstore has a kitchen in the back room. The characters (…) eat and drink.” That’s right, most of the protagonists of these stories not to go with a detective background they die of passion for cooking or long drinks; Almost all the plots are based on a culinary environment: a pristine kitchen, an isolated vineyard, a darkened winery, the table of a star-studded restaurant…
The great writers did not overlook a dish, an ingredient or a stew as a key piece in the development of a mystery to be solved. And, if not, tell Agatha Christie who made a glass of cognac, a simple cucumber sandwich or a muffin with orange marmalade the key to a murder.
The truth is that in the nineties, authors like Manuel Vázquez Montalbán or Andrea Camilleri covered their crime novels with good doses of culinary passion, social and political criticism. ”Private detectives are the thermometers of established morality, Biscuter. I tell you that this society is rotten. “He doesn’t believe in anything,” Montalbán stated in the voice of his legendary Pepe Carvalho in his work. The South Seas.
Gastronomy, as a motif, gives a lot of play for a good story, one of those where intrigue, terror, appetite and desire come together, resulting in what, now, we would call gastro noir or, as the writer Cristian Schleu has coined, “gastro thriller”. The term was born following the presentation of his novel Death in three textures (NdeNovela), which has just arrived in bookstores. A disturbing story where the reader is involved, an accomplice and witness, in the desperate pursuit of an inspector, who has not yet found the biggest serial killer. All of his victims seem dismembered, with their stomachs pierced, their guts exposed, always discovering a dish, an ingredient… a clue. Hence, the best allies to solve this thriller are Philippe, a cook, and Tsu, his passionate and always willing assistant. The intrigue is seasoned with a good dose of cooking and anxiety to get the second Michelin star. You learn, as you read, about the art of cutting, the search for original flavors, the creation of new dishes. All of this makes you intrigued at times and, at times, hungry. The story is told from the cook’s point of view, from confusion and perplexity. A very original way of telling that sometimes leads us to perceive certain aromas or textures of the dishes. As the quote that opens this book says: “Man does not live by murder alone. He needs affection, approval, encouragement and, once in a while, a good meal” (Alfred Hitchcok).
But what is good and what is not? Ah, that’s what critics are for! How many chefs have dreamed of shooting one of their own? We will never know this, but if we open the book Critical Flavor (Destino) everything begins like this: gunshots with the critic. The work, the third in a saga created by the writer, chef and popularizer, Xabier Gutiérrez, takes us one year after this bloody murder and takes us into the lives of five characters who wander in their dark lives. “I would summarize this novel with a single word: obsession. The obsession with getting the stars, the obsession with keeping them, which come together with the obsession of a police officer who has not solved the murder of the food critic for a year. All the characters, the five that surround the critic, hide a cruel and obsessive story, each one in his own area,” Xabier Gutiérrez tells EL PAÍS Gastro. The author, who for many years directed the R&D of the Arzak restaurant (San Sebastián), created inspector Vicente Parra and introduced him to a series of plots where gastronomy is another character. “My stories are born from observation and inspiration from cinema and literature from people like Raymond Chandler, Arturo Pérez-Reverte or Dolores Redondo,” he adds. “critical flavor It is the darkest novel I have written and the one with the least action. I have gotten more into the characters, into their darkness. It is difficult for a crime to go forward if it is with someone other than one person. The first thing you have to do to commit a perfect crime is to do it alone, there can be no accomplice. If this exists… the possibility of being caught is multiplied by a hundred million.” critical flavor ends with several big questions. To give answers, you have to open the second part, out of the smokeanother case from Vicente Parra, this time set in the world of catering.
After reading this, one wonders: is it worth it to become a food critic?
What does pay off is becoming a culinary inspector. A tracker of lost aromas, flavors, textures. At least, that’s what Hisashi Kashiwai, author of The Mysteries of the Kamogawa Tavern and now, the second part, The Delicious Stories of Kamogawa Tavern (both translated and published by Salamandra). Very personal cases that arise in the shadow of a small restaurant in Tokyo, always linked to the world of taste memories. A father and daughter, cook and waitress, listen, act and solve. They are the perfect gastronomic researchers. This second part follows the line of the first book: a good dose of mystery, a lot of gastronomy and its happy endings.
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