The Cook

By Harry Kressing

Book Overview

The Cook opens with Conrad, nearly seven feet tall, gaunt, and dressed all in black, arriving on his bicycle in the town of Cobb. He quickly secures a job as cook for the wealthy Hill family, winning... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345317211
• Release Date: July 1984
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

pseudonym

It has been rumored that this book was written by the well-known British mystery writer, Nicholas Freeling, and published under the pseudonym of Harry Kressing. I've seen no evidence for this. Jim Knipfel wrote about this a few years ago in the New York Press.

Fire Up the Bar-B-Que

The second greatest novel I have ever read in my life. Right b-hind Cozzens' Castaway and right b-four Durrenmatt's Traps. All three are not easily found. But this book is especially RARE, t-hee! Eat 'em up

Anthony Bourdain, you would love this!

Sorry to rave about an out-of-print book, but this one will be well worth tracking down. You'll thank me!I am wary of men who cook. Believe me, from personal experience. There is considerable power in the kitchen, which we girls have had wrenched from us. Our mothers were more fortunate. How I wish I could yell at a man, `Your Supper's in the oven!' Alas, progress. This story unfolds to the unsuspecting reader like a fairy tale, but it soon turns grim indeed, pun intended. Conrad is the chef who mysteriously arrives in town: `Six and a half feet tall, clad in black and riding on a bicycle'. He not only knows exactly what he wants, but he knows what everyone else wants as well. He very quickly becomes the most feared and revered man in the town of Cobb. His power over women is to seduce them with his dark culinary art, make them totally dependent, and their waistlines are is then his. He is not a man to cross at the pub. Most macho cooks are good knife fighters. A particularly gruesome scene takes place when he takes on a rival chef who threatens to bone him like a chicken, butcher him like a hog... Never underestimate a man who cooks, and cooks well. Had it been Eve and Conrad in the Garden of Eden, Conrad would have taken the apple, diced it with his glinting chef's knife and transformed it into Calvados. Harry Kressing writes a dark tale indeed. He has been compared to Kafka and Orwell, and quite rightly so. The genre is fantasy for those who appreciate cuisine and has undeniable makings of a cult book. This is a dish which is still good and should be reheated. I wish some Evil Corporate Publisher would see his way to a reprint.