Caroline Hunter finds The Satanic Mechanic a mouth-watering read.
Sally Andrew’s second novel, The Satanic Mechanic, follows on from her first (Recipes for Love and Murder) but can be read as a stand-alone story.
The central character is the same, food writer Tannie Maria, who carries her omnipresent love of food throughout this novel, too. Actually, she’s not so much a food writer as an agony aunt who writes a column in the local newspaper answering letters sent in by woebegone readers. She gives them advice about what to cook to solve whatever needs sorting in their lives. A food fixer, if you will.
She also gets tangled up in murders by being nearby when they occur, rather more often than most people would be comfortable with. Certainly her boyfriend, Detective Henk Kannemeyer, doesn’t like Maria’s proximity to untimely deaths, or her determination to help solve them, a habit that puts their relationship in peril, not to mention her safety.
The murder that sets this book rolling involves a land rights activist who is poisoned at a festival, collapsing in front of Maria. It transpires it had something to do with the sauce on his dinner, and Maria’s interest in ingredients and sharp sense of smell become central to the investigation. The detective is not happy about it, but is compelled to accept her help.
There is, however, another hindrance to their partnership — a dark secret Maria carries about her late husband. Seeking help to deal with this, she joins an eccentric group for PTSD sufferers run by a man known as the Satanic Mechanic. In fact, he turns out to be quite charming and Maria quickly warms to the group (especially as there’s a meal at the end of every session), but once again she finds herself in the vortex of a murder when a man is shot dead at one of the group’s meetings.
Essentially, this is a murder-mystery partly investigated by a pathologically curious woman who happens to love food. And food finds its way into everything, believe me. You don’t want to read this book when you’re hungry, and I did wonder how Maria didn’t end up the size of a house by the end.
I enjoyed the characters, of which there were many but they were well-drawn and distinct, and admired Andrew’s evident love of her South African surroundings, which comes across in her descriptions of the landscape, animal and bird life, and her liberal use of Afrikaans. Her writing has a strong sense of place and the setting serves the plot well.
Once again, Andrew has included an index of the recipes alluded to in the book, and they make for mouthwatering reading.
The Satanic Mechanic is a culinary treat with a little murder on the side.
- Caroline Hunter is an ODT subeditor.
