The Crime of Foodless Fiction
By S.J. Rozan
December 5, 2023
People in my books tend to eat a lot. They also drink a lot of coffee and tea. Sometimes, booze. Why, you say? Well, but don’t we all? Especially in NYC, where most of my books are set, morning or afternoon coffee is a meal of its own (“Coffee soon?” is NYC-ese for “Let’s get together.”) and we settle in around restaurant tables rather than in our own tiny apartments whenever we want to hang out with more than two other people. It’s a waste of a great opportunity for characterization if people in a book don’t eat; what they like by way of food is as telling as how they dress.
As a kid reading fantasy, my first genre love, I learned to distrust a writer whose characters went on a quest and didn’t stop for meals; those books tended to the turgid and preachy. Conversely, I was charmed by how in <i>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</i>, the Witch lures Edmund into her orbit by giving him Turkish Delight (though I had no idea what that was, and when I found out I was surprised at Edmund for not holding out for chocolate). And it’s a mark of JRR Tolkien’s genius that he made his everyman heroes, the hobbits, so very fond of eating. Who could fail to identify with someone who, though denied his Second Breakfast, marshals his courage and marches gamely on?
My PI protagonists, Lydia Chin and Bill Smith, both love to eat, though what they eat differs. She’s a proponent, of course, of Chinese food, and of salads, and tea: green, black, and herbal. He’s into Chinese food, also, though in much greater quantities, and can put away burgers, fries, lots of black coffee, and, due to his childhood in the South, sweet baked goods of dubious provenance.
The Mayors of New York opens with Bill having coffee with an ex, at a place he says is “Not my kind of see-and-be-seen café.*” He drinks a double espresso. The ex drinks flowery tea.
The book is a journey through what are called “ethnic neighborhoods,” though I seriously dislike that term, the way it implies that WASP is the sociological norm and all deviations from it are “ethnic.” Here in the U S of A that’s some serious noise we need to get away from, and here in New York, the most diverse city in the country, it’s a ridiculous thought. Every neighborhood’s ethnic, everyone talks with an accent. The end.
After coffee with the ex, Bill meets Lydia in City Hall Park, with deli** sandwiches — salami and sardines — and they discuss the case. They go from there to a meeting with the Mayor in City Hall, where pointedly nothing is on offer but individual water bottles with the city seal on them. When they get to their next stop, the Mayor’s home, her chef is making oatmeal cookies so they have a couple of those, with a glass of milk.*** After that, Times Square, where they’re too busy getting into a melee to eat street-cart pretzels****, which I’d recommend if you’re there and avoiding melees.
After the battle they meet with a guy and drink soda — Coke for Bill, seltzer for Lydia — and she eats a bag of peanuts because fighting always makes her hungry. They leave from there for the home of an immigrant from Mumbai, and on the way stop for take-home snacks: “Pakora, both vegetable and paneer; the tender crepes and potato-and-spice filling of masala dosa; pulao with peas; the crisp curls of onion bhaji; and sweet syrupy gulab jamun.*****” Bill and Lydia don’t get to try them, though, because they need to rush off to another interview. This one’s on a park bench in Harlem, so there’s nothing to eat, but when they leave, Bill, who’s feeling the hours between the sandwiches and the current moment, suggests a nearby Ethiopian place he knows, the Tsion Café*****, “that makes a shiro wot that’ll knock your socks off.”
That’s the first day. There’s more food and more action after that, including food that smells great but that our heroes don’t get to taste, poor them. I do, though. This is a hell of a town, especially for eating. Coffee soon?
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* The Parisian Tea Room, West 36th Street, Manhattan
** Also called a bodega. On any corner, all five boroughs.
*** Upper East Side, Manhattan, but he’s a private chef so you’re out of luck. There are great oatmeal cookies at Levain Bakery, though. West 74th Street, Manhattan, and other locations.
**** Anywhere in Midtown Manhattan, honestly.
***** In Jackson Heights, Queens, but because of logistics I had to invent the restaurant. You can’t go wrong at the Jackson Diner, though. 37-40B 74th Street, Queens.
****** 763 St. Nicholas Ave, Manhattan.
About The Mayors of New York by S.J. Rozan:
In January, New York City inaugurates its first female mayor. In April, her son disappears. Called in by the mayor’s chief aide–a former girlfriend of private investigator Bill Smith’s–to find the missing fifteen-year-old, Bill and his partner, Lydia Chin, are told the boy has run away. Neither the press nor the NYPD know that he’s missing, and the mayor wants him back before a headstrong child turns into a political catastrophe. But as Bill and Lydia investigate, they turn up more questions than answers.
Why did the boy leave? Who else is searching for him, and why? What is his twin sister hiding?
Then a teen is found dead and another is hit by gunfire. Are these tragedies related to each other, and to the mayor’s missing son?
In a desperate attempt to find the answer to the boy’s disappearance before it’s too late, Bill and Lydia turn to the only contacts they think will be able to help: the neighborhood leaders who are the real ‘mayors’ of New York.