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Title: Bone in the Throat by Anthony Bourdain ISBN: 1-58234-102-8 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.36 (14 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Mildly entertaining.
Comment: The best parts of the book are the semi-autobiographical elements which are probably lifted from the author's career as a chef. The convuluted plot includes dealings with the mafia, and ends pretty unsatisfactorily.
Where the author excels is entertaining the reader with tales about the sex, drugs, and criminal behavior, and he's only talking about the restaurant staff. He let's us in on the secrets behind how food is delivered to your table at dinner time.
For a better look behind the restaurant business, I recommend reading his non-fiction works Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour.
Rating: 4
Summary: Raw meat.
Comment: Set in the Bronx and Brooklyn, this is a grisly and graphic story of mob murder, dismemberment, and torture, along with the businesses of protection, loansharking, and money laundering. Tommy Pagano, the sous-chef at a small restaurant, who was cared for as a child by his mob-connected uncle Sal Pitera, finds himself up to his prime rib in dangerous mob business when Sally wants payback. Sandwiched between bloodthirsty racketeers on one side and equally threatening and sinister investigators who want him to give up Sally and his "friends" on the other side, Tommy has more than ample reason to fear for his life.
Suspense and horror are leavened throughout by humor, which comes mainly from absurdities--a hitman standing naked while he dismembers a body in order to protect his clothes, a chef upset because someone used his kitchen knife instead of a boning knife, a mobster telling a hitman that his actions were "bush." This is primarily is a fast-paced story of murder and mayhem, with humor on the side and lots of insights into the restaurant business. Local color, realistic-sounding (and often funny) wise-guy dialogue, an engaging main character with whom we sympathize, and investigators who are sometimes as venal as the men they investigate will keep you reading well into the night.
Rating: 5
Summary: If he cooks as well as he writes . . .
Comment: As the NYTBR said, this is a "deliciously depraved" novel. Tommy Pagana is a young sous-chef in an okay Manhattan restaurant. He likes his work, he hopes he has a future both with his career and with Cheryl the waitress, and he has tried for years to distance himself from his mobster relatives and their friends -- especially his Uncle Salvatore, a mid-level wiseguy who yearns to be "straightened out" by the higher-ups. The restaurant is run by Harvey, a Jewish ex-dentist who's into the local mob for serious money, plus he has another loan from a turf-encroaching bunch from Brooklyn. Only Harvey is also an informant for the FBI, which is trying to stir things up just to see what shakes loose. Then there's Michael the junkie chef, Tommy's friend and boss, who is also put to work by the feds, and there's Al the special agent, who really doesn't care what happens to any of them as long as they bring him something to make a case out of. Then Uncle Sally pushes the reluctant Tommy into allowing him to use the restaurant for a secret meeting -- which turns into a homicide, witnessed by Tommy, . . . who is now also a person of interest to law enforcement. What to do? How to stay both alive and out of prison, yet not have to rat out his uncle, which would break his mother's heart? These hoods aren't Donald Westlake's comic bumblers, either. In fact, their workaday attitude toward what they do, including murder, is what makes them decidedly scary. (The NYPD detectives, on the other hand, hardly come off as Lenny Brisco. . . .) Bourdain has a real ear for the nuances of New York style and conversation, plus a gift for describing life in the kitchen, that make the whole thing ring true. So why hasn't this terrific book been made into a film?
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Title: Gone Bamboo by Anthony Bourdain ISBN: 1582341036 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: A Cook's Tour : Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines by Anthony Bourdain ISBN: 0060012781 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 05 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain ISBN: 0060934913 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 08 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical by Anthony Bourdain ISBN: 1582341338 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Bobby Gold Stories : A Novel by Anthony Bourdain ISBN: 1582342334 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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