Affairs of Steak by Julie Hyzy

Still fun, although this time the title food does not figure at all - except as a means to a pun. "Affairs" is the keyword in this title. It also suffered from the emphasis on a commercial kitchen tool(?)/appliance(?) that I had never heard of and had a great deal of difficulty visualizing from the description, a tilt skillet. It seems that a tilt skillet is a really big rectangular lidded cooking pot mounted on its own base with its own independent heat source, either gas or electric. It was unclear to me that the thing actually tilts, but maybe that is something you only know if you are in the biz. You may have figured out where this is heading - the first two bodies were stuffed inside a pair of these things in the kitchen at the venue selected for a major administration function which Ollie and the unlikeable Peter Sargeant are checking out.

Since the two victims are the ones who would logically be planning and facilitating the event, Ollie and Sargeant are put in charge. So Ollie and her sworn enemy are jointly in charge of the operation, under the supervision of the second string staff manager (I can't remember his actual title at the moment) and he is a dubious value because he has only worked under the supervision of the retiring manager.

We also have the obnoxious personal chef for the First Family, whose mission seems to be to discredit Ollie and --- it isn't clear what he wants, because he does not seem to want to have her job - only to have her out of it. In the interests of promoting himself, he commits some rather serious security faux pas (whatever the plural of that is), and is left wading through eggshells at the end, no doubt set up to be the primary irritant in the next one, since Ollie and the insensitive sensitivity officer, Sargeant, have arrived at a position of mutual respect by the end of the book.

Also, Ollie's relationship with her new Secret Service boyfriend is actually established by the end of the book, rather than dangling in an indefinite state. The crimes are resolved with satisfying definitiveness and everyone lives happily ever after, except for the ones that are dead and those whose are happier when unhappy.