State of the Onion

A White House Chef Mystery, Book 1

By: Julie Hyzy

Narrated by: Eileen Stevens

Introducing White House Assistant Chef Olivia Paras, who is rising-and sleuthing-to the top. Includes recipes for a complete presidential menu! Never let them see you sweat-that's White House Assistant Chef Olivia Paras's motto, which is pretty hard to honor in the most important kitchen in the world. She's hell-bent on earning her dream job, Executive Chef. There's just one thing: Her nemesis is vying for it, too. Well, that and the fact that an elusive assassin wants to see her fry.

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Critic reviews

"[A] compulsively readable whodunit full of juicy behind-the-Oval Office details, flavorful characters and a satisfying side dish of red herrings - not to mention 20 pages of easy-to-cook recipes fit for the leader of the free world." (Publishers Weekly)

This was fun.

If you can accept the premise and the, "Wait -- what?" moments when you KNOW that a particular event just would never happen in the White House, this is a fun read. Stow your skepticism in your back pocket and just relax.

So good I listened to it in one sitting!

I got this without knowing much about it during a recent Audible sale and am so glad I did! it kept me riveted and had a fascinating plot while keeping very clean language and without sex scenes. The story was well written and the characters drawn well too.

This book kept me listening from start to finish in one sitting and was a great buy!

Interesting read

When I first started this book I thought it was going to be a series about what goes on in the kitchen at the White House in real life. Boy, was I wrong this book kept you on your toes, clambering for more. I was sad when the series ended. I recommend this book.

Food Related

If you could sum up State of the Onion in three words, what would they be?

Fast pace, good food, interesting

Who was your favorite character and why?

I like Olivia, even though she does do some stupid things. Peter Sargent is a love to hate character as is Loral Ann

What about Eileen Stevens’s performance did you like?

I think she is great. All her characters are believable. She is really good and the men and women all sound different.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

My reaction was: how could you do that? I love food related mysteries but I don't like it when the author has the main character do obvious dumb moves.

An interesting idea

The basic idea of mysteries in the White House kitchen is good. Many of the characters are engaging. The main character is, however, almost schizophrenic in the way she swings from calm, organized professional to ditzy girl who can't string words into a coherent sentence. The ditz makes really stupid decisions that only serve to create false tensions in the plot. I'll give this author one more try and hope that her editor is tougher on her in the future.

Not bad for "cozy" espionage

This is one of those gentle murder books, a coffee-house, caterer, cookie shop mystery. It is better than many. I have tried several in my search for lighter fare than The Gray Man and Mitch Rapp; most cannot be stomached, but this one is okay. Many of the characters are well-fleshed and distinct, notably the kitchen staff--Henry is the most endearing, but Bucky turns out to be quite interesting. There is less food fascination, and no recipes. The romance angst is a bit juvenile, but again, not too bad.

Two plots are intertwined, first, the application and audition process for new White House head chef introduces a celebrity rival witch who assumes she's a shoe-in. The WH major-domo is also a cut-out villain. These two beg to be slapped, but add some fun to the mix. The second plot line is a warning that the president is in danger from the Chameleon, the most-feared international assassin. You can probably figure out the result of the first, but the getting there is fun, and there are still surprises at the end. The second takes a moment longer, and really isn't a big surprise in the end, but again the journey is okay.

The main plot flaw, as I saw it, was with Kasim, the made-up Middle-East-country interpreter and right-hand man to the visiting prince. This man from a strict Muslim country, whose visiting princess wears full burqa and speaks to no one, blithely chats with the main character, a woman chef dressed in white chef's trousers, tunic, and toque. He almost confides in her. I found this intimacy highly improbable.

The narrator does the women's voices pretty well, but the men's voices are forced and obvious. She especially fails at dear Henry's (the retiring head chef) voice. She also mispronounces several words.

Pleasantly surprised

I hard a hard time being interested in this story at first but I hung in there and actually ended up enjoying it.

Compelling, fascinating, urgent

The action starts immediately in this series debut featuring Olivia Paras, assistant chef in the White House kitchen. She is just arriving for work when a man runs across the White House lawn and right in front of her. Secret Service agents are too far away to catch him, so she whacks him with a frying pan intended to be a gift. He tells her he wants to warn the President about some danger.

Olivia’s dream job would be to become the Executive Chef, a position that will open up soon as the current man retires. Olivia, or Ollie for short, is the top candidate from the current staff. She is vying for the job against a former White House kitchen employee who now has her own TV show. Her audition is to be a taped episode of her TV show that is intended to be her last hurrah once she is appointed Executive Chef.

An international assassin known as the Chameleon appears to be in Washington, DC at the same time delegates from two large middle Eastern countries have come to negotiate a trade agreement with the help of the President. Ollie joins with her crew of chefs in the small kitchen to prepare not only the first family’s meals but also meals for invited guests. Ollie even travels to Camp David to feed royalty

Ollie is worried about the man she whacked with the frying pan, so she calls the local jail to check on him. No information is given to her, but the man calls her cell phone. He wants to arrange a meeting so he can pass on his warning. Reluctantly she agrees. Before he can say anything, he is shot by a mysterious man that Ollie can identify. They believe this is the Chameleon. And he considers Ollie a loose end.

Learning more about the inner workings of the White House was fascinating. Seeing how the chefs prepare meals every day and for many special events concurrently was quite interesting in author Julie Hyzy’s hands. Every day is different, and the staff is always aware that they are preparing meals for the most important house in the country. Ollie has to balance this against fleeing from the assassin’s efforts to eliminate her. The action throughout held an urgency that kept me listening to Eileen Steven’s narration without stopping. Her handling of the action and many different character voices was equally compelling. Plot lines crossed easily without being contrived. A very enjoyable listen that I definitely recommend. On to book two!

Pure fiction -- I still loved it!

Okay -- it's not believable. No winsome young white heterosexual lass like Ollie would ever be hired as the White House Chef -- that's a patronage position, and would go to someone with political clout, or as a bow to some interest group. At least in these post-JFK days, cooking ability has very little to do with it.

And right, one would assume that security in the White House would be a whole lot better than it was in this book -- or at least one WOULD have assumed that, up until the several recent and very serious breaches of security have made the headlines. Now that part of the plot doesn't seem so far fetched at all.

But okay, this is fiction, for crying out loud! It doesn't have to echo real life -- and there were so many more things to really like about this book I couldn't stop listening.

Ollie got her first "Atta girl!" from me when she unabashedly went out to the firing range to practice -- now remember, Ollie is not a PI, she's not a detective, not in law enforcement. She's a cook, an artist, and still she likes to shoot! Good deal -- a nascent Sarah Palin, right there. Ollie could probably plug a boar with the best of 'em. Not only that, but she reveres her father, who was killed in the service. She regularly goes to Arlington Cemetery to honor him, seek his presence and consolation. That's nice; nice to see a young girl who honors and respects her dead father. AND she gets goose bumps when she hears the Star Spangled Banner! Are you seeing a pattern, here? We actually have a conservative protagonist -- something so rare in contemporary fiction that it deserves to be celebrated. I like that.

True, she should dump that boyfriend of hers -- any man who repeatedly talks to her as though she's "a wayward second grader" deserves to be dumped, and fast. She doesn't deserve that -- she deserves someone a whole lot better than that weasel. But maybe she takes care of him in a subsequent book.

All in all it was a great listen -- lots of red herrings. I had several resolutions in mind, all through the book, and none of them were right. The ending was fine -- took me by surprise. I also loved all the tidbits of information about cooking in the White House -- they may be fiction, too, for all I know, but it sounded plausible enough. I resonated with the evil political appointee who was trying to run the show -- that was one character who was most definitely NOT fictional. Those kind of turkeys exist, oh, yes they do. As do ambitious characters like Laurel Ann -- that wasn't fiction either.

Good book! I've already added two more by Julie Hyzy to my wish list. Good light reading!

Surprisingly exciting book!

I was not expecting much out of this book (my apologies to the author) because of the gimmicky nature of the title. I was pleasantly surprised! The story moved at just the right pace and the ending was a bit of a surprise to me. Well done!