Food and the crime novel

I love a good crime novel. Whether it be the detailed recounting of the evidence that leads Sherlock Holmes to his identification of the villain; the list of suspects in an Agatha Christie novel who all have a motive for committing the crime or the dark criminal underbelly of John Rebus’s Edinburgh in Ian Rankin’s contemporary fiction, crime novels have been a staple of my reading since my teenage years. 

And despite the crimes and the urgency of solving them – and the reader’s desire to find out ‘whodunnit’ – there is always time for food to be written and read about in a crime novel.

Of course, the food may be the murder weapon: in Christie’s short story, ‘The House of Lurking Death’ various characters are the recipients of arsenic-laced chocolates and ricin-laced sandwiches.

Then there are the detectives who enjoy cooking – perhaps as an antidote to the horrors they face in their daily work: Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta and Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti are two that spring to mind. And in their love of good food and their culinary prowess, Scarpetta and Brunetti are in stark contrast to Rankin’s Rebus and Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander, two middle-aged male detectives who have a propensity to drink too much and eat too many take-aways (with the impact on their health becoming more pronounced as they age through their novels).

But sometimes food is just there as part and parcel of everyday life, underlying the normality of the setting within which the crime takes place and is solved. In Christie’s Sleeping Murder (written c. 1940 but not published until 1976), Gwenda and Giles Reed, a young married couple, discuss with Miss Marple strange events they have been experiencing in their new home. Their conversation is accompanied by food and drink: ‘the waitress brought three cups of weak coffee, and a scone and butter, and a plate of cakes’.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Christie’s 1926 daring crime novel with a brilliant twist at the end (which I wouldn’t dream of revealing – read the novel and find out for yourself!), opens with breakfast: the chapter is called ‘Dr Sheppard at the Breakfast Table’. Dr Sheppard, who narrates the novel, begins by telling the reader of the death of Mrs Ferrars; he is called for at eight in the morning and, by nine o’clock, is back home eating ‘eggs and bacon’ with his sister, Caroline.

Later in the novel there is a Mah Jong party. Dr Sheppard relates how this Chinese board game event is a regular event in their village of King’s Abbot: ‘The guests arrive in galoshes and waterproofs after dinner. They partake of coffee and later of cake, sandwiches and tea.’ The guests play Mah Jong, discuss the recent mysterious events that have been taking place in King’s Abbot and at an opportune moment, the ‘tea things´ are brought in.

The day after the Mah Jong party sees the funerals of Mrs Ferrars and Roger Ackroyd. After the service, Hercule Poirot asks Dr Sheppard to help him interview Ackroyd’s butler, Parker, and lawyer, Hammond.
The interrogations over, Sheppard spontaneously invites Poirot to lunch: ‘We had just arrived at my house, and on the spur of the moment I invited Poirot to come in and take pot luck.’

Sheppard’s action is presented as that of a thoughtless man, one with no idea of the practicalities involved in feeding people: ‘I thought Caroline would be pleased with me, but it is hard to satisfy one’s womenfolk. It appears that we were eating chops for lunch – the kitchen staff being regaled on tripe and onions. And two chops set before three people are productive of embarrassment.’

The pressure is on Caroline to meet this challenge – and she does so with style, claiming to be a vegetarian, eating an alternative lunch and thereby liberating the chops for the two male diners: ‘With magnificent mendacity, [Caroline] explained to Poirot that … she adhered strictly to a vegetarian diet. She descanted ecstatically on the delights of nut cutlets (which I am quite sure she has never tasted) and ate a Welsh rarebit with gusto and frequent cutting remarks as to the dangers of ‘flesh’ foods.’

As well as providing another example of the way food weaves itself into the routines and procedures of a murder investigation, this episode also highlights the role of deception within the crime novel. Whilst Caroline’s lie is simply to prevent embarrassment and preserve social decorum, the ease with which she manages it reflects the way falsehoods permeate crime fiction. The detective seeks to expose the truth from characters who are determined to conceal it.

Welsh rarebit seemed the obvious choice of dish here. Whilst I regularly eat melted cheese on toast, before writing this post I had only eaten ‘proper’ Welsh rarebit on a couple of occasions and never actually made it myself. Now that I have, I will certainly be repeating the experience; it takes cheese on toast to a new and higher level and is definitely worth the extra effort. The recipe is extremely flexible in terms of the bread, the cheese you use (as well as the Cheddar I used, I came across recipes using Lancashire, Double Gloucester, Caerphilly, Cheshire, Parmesan) and the choice of liquid: whilst strong ale seems to be the traditional choice, other recommendations include Guinness, Stout, Porter or milk (if you want a non-alcoholic version).

WELSH RAREBIT

Ingredients: per person
1/2 teaspoon English mustard
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce (or to taste)
1 tablespoon beer
15g butter
75g cheddar cheese, grated
1 egg yolk
1 slice bread

Method:
Mix together the mustard and beer in a small pan to make a paste. Add the butter and Worcestershire sauce and heat over a gentle heat until the butter has melted.
Add the cheese and stir to melt. Taste and seaon if necessary. Remove fron the heat and allow to cool slightly.
In the meantime preheat the grill and toast the bread on both sides.
Add the egg yolk to the cheese mixture and beat in until smooth.
Spoon the mixture onto the toast and place under the grill until golden and bubbling. Serve straightaway.