https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.059
Cooking Up Clues: Culinary Sleuths and Crime Detection in Aunty Lee’s Delights and The Cook
DRISHYA K
Research Scholar
Department of English
Pondicherry University, Puducherry
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9658-9276
drishyakpremeekaran@gmail.com
DR HARPREET KAUR VOHRA
Professor
Department of English
Pondicherry University, Puducherry
https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8099-6954
hvohra@pondiuni.ac.in
Abstract: Beyond a vital element for survival, food serves as a semiotic tool that reveals social dynamics and cultural heritage. The culinary experience, a cardinal aspect in any culture has the power to transport us to forgotten memories bridging the chasm between past and present. Culinary mysteries are a nascent subgenre of cosy mysteries that coalesces crime and fiction in an intriguing way. Cuisine often sheds light on the characters’ insights, psychological states and buried pasts in these novels. Amateur sleuths in contemporary fiction employ culinary skills for deduction and autonomy by combining flavours and facts to expose hidden truths. This paper analyses the intricacies of culinary spaces as sites of investigation and cultural expression in Aunty Lee’s Delights (2013) and The Cook (2022). Ovidia Yu discusses a crime scenario in Singapore, where Aunty Lee uses her culinary expertise to unveil the murder and its hidden motives. On the other hand, Chowdhury’s narrative revolves around the murder of a young woman investigated by a former police officer, Kamil Rahman, who works as a chef in an Indian restaurant in London. The paper examines the hybrid identities of protagonists as chefs and sleuths and how food functions as a narrative device, a tool of justice and a marker of identity. This study implements a qualitative approach centred on close reading of the novels and also demonstrates how the kitchen operates as a liminal space of both solace and confrontation that dismantles all forms of hierarchy.
Keywords: food studies, culinary mysteries, sleuth, crime fiction, culture, identity
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