NAPA, Calif., May 1, 2012 — Licio Gella is one of Rome's top private chefs, and he's disappeared. For more than fifteen years Licio cooked for an elite group of businessmen and Vatican officials — but his clients never suspected that over the course of hundreds of meals their trusted chef had been recording their dinner conversations. So begins Chef Chronicle (ISBN 978-1-938297-40-3, http://chefchronicle.com), the new thriller released this week by first-time author Jim Ruch.
Chef Chronicle unfolds as Rome hires freelance journalist Mike Ambrose to track down Licio. What they discover is their worst nightmare: Licio has compiled an historical document of corruption and deceit spanning decades. Now operating a restaurant in central Missouri under an assumed name, Licio is suspicious when Mike arranges to conduct interviews with the restaurant's cooks on the pretext of researching a book on food. His suspicions are confirmed as he learns Mike is reporting back to Rome.
Forced to move up his timeline for revenge, Licio heads back to Rome for a showdown twenty years in the making. As Chef Chronicle careens toward its climactic ending, readers will be hard-pressed to put the book down.
Ruch, a freelance private chef living in Napa, California, has worked on yachts for fifteen years, traveling through the Caribbean, the Bahamas and the Panama Canal; for six seasons he has worked on the coastlines of Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Ruch holds degrees from The New York Restaurant School, Le Cordon Bleu and The Royal Thai Culinary Institute; in 1999 he was awarded third place at the Chef de Concours Megayacht competition in Monaco.
Ruch began writing music, poetry and prose in his early teen years. Chef Chronicle blends two of his passions — writing and cooking — to produce a richly woven story made all the more readable for its accurate portrayal of the private chef profession.
For fans of Chef Chronicle, Ruch has good news: The book is the first of a trilogy. Yacht Prospect Due, the second in the series, details the life of a yacht crew working in the Mediterranean on a boat that has no budget, thanks to the events that unfold in Chef Chronicle. The final book, The Prospect Theatre, tells the story of three brothers from Germany who come to St. Louis as master cabinetmakers and build the Prospect Theatre in 1926; that building later becomes the restaurant setting for Chef Chronicle.
Chef Chronicle is available everywhere for iPad, Kindle or Nook.
Order direct from the author at:
https://secure.myBookOrders.com/order/jim-ruch
Learn more about the book at .
Contact:
Jim Ruch
954-850-3866
Email
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