Tony Whelpton

The Heat of the Kitchen Tony Whelpton

The Heat of the Kitchen is a fast-moving, exciting story: Saint-Pierre-sur-Loup is a little town in the south of France, a popular tourist destination, but with a notorious problem - perpetual traffic jams - and Alain Simondi is its Mayor. Cécile Delpech is an attractive single mother who, although leader of the opposition on the local Council, is closer to the Mayor than her position would imply. Simondi's proposals for building a relief road split the town, and tempers run high, especially when adverse reports start to appear in the regional newspaper, at the hand of a pretty, young, feisty woman reporter who has caught the compulsively roving eye of the Mayor. Who will gain the upper hand, Simondi or his critics? Whose dirty tricks are the most effective? In a part of France where the heat can transform a traffic jam into a murder scene, and the police, supposedly under the control of the Mayor, are not to be trusted, especially, it seems, when faced with an endemic drug culture among the young people of the region, the heat of the political kitchen is much more intense than in most little towns which, to the uninitiated, have the aspect of being a backwater.