All the President's Menus

Title: All the President's Menus
Author: Julie Hyzy
Copyright: 2015, Paperback
Series: White House Chef Mysteries
Source: Library

The White House is on a skeleton crew because of a government sequester. For the kitchen, that means that Olivia Paras has only one staff member with her in the main kitchen and no plans for exciting state dinners, etc. When she and Bucky hear that they the plans are still on to host a dinner for a presidential candidate from the country of Saardisca, the first woman to ever run for office there, they are excited to have an event to plan and cook. The bad news is, they will also be hosting four of that nation’s top chefs, in their kitchen as well. Almost as soon as the visiting chefs arrive, things start to go down hill. Pastry chef Marcel passes out and later claims he was drugged, the chefs are constantly lapsing in to their home language and arguing, then, when Ollie thinks she might have a handle on what is going on, one of the visiting chefs collapses and dies.

The mystery was pretty good, interesting with the weird other country and sequester.  I really like the Ollie / Gav relationship - cool to have a supportive partnership instead of the guy always questioning the woman's instincts. The food wasn't as much a star in this one as in others but, still some good mentions. A lot of setup in this book for future changes...we'll see what happens next.