A chance meeting with Christian, a chef he knows from way back, gives Paul a role teaching at a cookery school in Belgravia.
All goes well until Christian is found murdered and the Police seem to think that Paul is a viable suspect. In fact anyone on the course could have done it, they all have a reason.
I read this in one sitting and really liked it.

Yet another author trying to be the next Richard Osman and sadly falling short. A nice, easy to read and enjoyable cosy mystery, but it's didn't grab and hold my interest. It's no great literary classic but I'd recommend to anyone who wanted something easy to get through

What a wonderful start to what I’m guessing is an intended series.

Quite newly bereaved after the death of his beloved partner, Marcus, Paul is persuaded to step in as a last minute replacement for an old friend as head chef for a local high end cookery school.

However, it quickly becomes apparent that his erstwhile friend, Christian, has been less than honest with him and Paul quickly finds himself in the centre of a murder enquiry.

This is a pitch-perfect cosy Murder-mystery with lots of funny characters, gossip and even more delicious food. The author’s foodie background is obvious but what really leavens the book is the warmth and likeable personality of the central character and some of the hilariously madcap or awful satellite characters.

With thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher, Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for an arc of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This is the author’s debut novel I believe, and it shows promise of a fantastic writing career.

I admit the choice of murder was one I’ve not come across before in a book of this type and it took me by surprise (and an “ew with a giggle attached” - sorry Christian).

I loved all of the characters- all very different, and all equally given attention by the author- I really felt that I knew them.

Overall, hilarious, intriguing, fast paced and entertaining- I didn’t put this one down for long..

My thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

It is often said that you should write from experiences so well done to chef Orlando Muffin for choosing to write his first book of fiction with the kitchen as it's base and creating a thriller. A Masterchef semi finalist and editor of some popular food magazines in addition to a podcaster alongside Tom Kerridge as well as an author of seven cook books is pretty good good CV for this author. A gentle tail without being too gruesome and some interesting characters. This book will clearly appeal to thriller loving chefs. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to ARC.

On the chopping block today …. Knife skills for beginners 🔪

I’m sorry to say but the first word that comes to mind is boring! I love cosy murder mysteries and so was excited to delve into the culinary work but this fell flat ….. as a pancake! lol

The pace started slow but I was hopeful it would pick up however, someone forgot to turn up the heat and left it on shimmer. lol
(Okay, that’s it for the cookery puns … maybe lol).

There’s plenty of characters to sink your teeth into (ok, I lied 🤥 lol) but, again, they were a little two dimensional and no one that I really took to or was invested in. 😔 although there was someone who piqued my interest and added a dollop of spice to the mystery. 😁

I had my suspicions, (and that element was right), however, there was a clever twist I didn’t see coming and that a nice surprise.
The last 30% saved the book for me and I was glad I pushed through and didn’t DNF.

One reason it was slow, for me, was because there is so much talk about preparing & cooking food (including recipes) and that’s not an interest of mine. I do love EATING but not the cooking part and certainly nothing so pretentious (I’m a simple gal lol), so maybe that played a part.

Overall I did like the book and Orlando has ‘proved’ himself with his debut novel. I will definitely check out book 2.

Thank you NetGalley & Transworld Publishers for the earc.

Paul is a chef and when his longtime friend, Christian a celebrity chef, asks him to help out at a cookery school in Belgravia the last thing Paul expects is murder. The body is found by Paul and due to his excellent knife skills the police believe he is the prime suspect. Paul needs to solve the murder and quickly else he might just be next on the chopping block.

This was a really well written murder mystery. It was reminiscent of other murder mysteries so if you like the Richard Osman books then you will love this. I liked the characters, the story and the setting. I did guess the identity of the murderer but this did not spoil my enjoyment at all. Nice little comment at the end that means there is a second book coming, soon hopefully.

Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didn't really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of getting both men and women to do what he wanted. Paul somehow got the impression that he'd be at the school to assist Paul, who had a broken arm, but it didn't turn out that way. The teaching - and the problems - are all his own. The one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to turn up dead. Unfortunately, he was the person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to be the prime suspect.

Ok, it's cosy crime, but it's well done. There's a reasonable cast of suspects - the students and staff at the cookery school - and they're all well-fleshed out with decent back stories. As you'd expect from the location, there's Lady Serena Brash and her daughter, the Honourable Harriet, who's obviously hiding something. Rose, who owns the school, is obviously struggling to make ends meet, but she's keen that her own liaison doesn't become common knowledge. The more you read, the more you'll realise that the students are there not so much to learn to cook as to escape from their normal lives.

The USP of this book is the cookery school location. Do you remember author Orlando Murrin as a semi-finalist on Masterchef? Well, he's used his culinary know-how to set the scene. You even get some excellent recipes in the text - I'm going to try the one for cheesy biscuits. You'll understand a lot about the skills required to be a chef (or even a decent cook) but you'll feel that you've picked it up on the way, rather than been educated.

It's the plot you really want to know about, isn't it? Well, I worked out the bones of the explanation, fairly early on but didn't get the whole of it. The clues were there, but I missed them! I found the solution just a little far-fetched but this is cosy crime and provided that you're not looking for a plot which is going to blow you away, you can have a good, easy, enjoyable read. I'd certainly read more from Murrin.

I'd like to thank the publishers for letting Bookbag have a review copy.

A cosy crime novel, that intrigued me straight away.

I found it was an easy read that I mostly enjoyed but would be in a rush to re-read.

I would recommend it to someone who enjoys this genre and wants an easy read.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for gifting me this arc in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Knife Skills for Beginners is a fun easy read mystery story. It had great characters and enough twists and turns to keep me on my toes. A great read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC.

This book has all the ingredients for the perfect murder mystery. The author uses his culinary expertise to great effect, throwing in a few recipes for good measure. I expect the launch party for this book to be well catered! A culinary school is a great opportunity to get a bunch of suspects rounded up for this delicious murder mystery.

A crime story with a culinary twist. Set in a cookery school Paul is contacted by an old friend for a favour to teach a group of students cookery for a week. When a murder happens he and his students are the prime suspects. Can he solve whodunnit before the end of the course?

It took me while to get into this book but I warmed gradually to the characters and the setting. Paul is the central character having been asked to step in for a friend, Christian, to run a cookery course - said friend is then butchered and Paul becomes suspect no 1 several times over the book as the plot thickens! He narrates the story and there is definitely more to come from this character so I hope there is a second planned. A twist in the tale at the end that I only half saw coming so a very enjoyable read!

**Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read an advanced e-copy of this book. All opinions are my own **

Whilst I did enjoy this book well enough, I felt that it was let down by an overly-busy storyline/cast of characters. I found myself wondering at certain points what scenes and side-plots had to do with the main story. Because there were a lot of suspects, it felt that there wasn't time to fully bring most of them to life so they felt a little two-dimensional.
Something that I thought was really well done was the descriptions of the cookery school and the lessons. There was real depth to these - so much so that I found myself looking for it on Google maps! Sharing all the little details really gave me a great sense of the environment that everyone was experiencing. The lessons were where I got most of my insight into the characters, more of that would have made a big difference in my opinion.
I think the key to brilliant cosy crime is idiosyncratic protagonists and I never really got that from Paul - I didn't understand his motivations well enough to find him plausible. There was tenderness when he was talking about Marcus and coming to terms with his death, which was lovely to read, and his relationship with Julie could've been showcased more as that was relatable.

Yesterday Paul, a Chef, showed his students how to use a chopper to remove a pigeon’s head; today someone used it on Christian, another Chef. Paul’s prints were still on the handle! The day before yesterday, Christian, having broken his arm, had asked his old friend Paul to take over the Cookery Course that he ran, based in a large Victorian house in Belgravia (an exclusive area in Central London). Christian is a famous TV Chef (although the show no longer airs), and had a chain of Brasseries (until the business went insolvent and he was bankrupted). The one-week residential courses which are run there have a fixed programme of Cheffing skills set by the owner, Rose, who also happens to have been one of Christian’s paramours (he has a reputation as a womaniser). Expecting professional standards in the kitchens and in the quality of the facilities for the students, Paul is rather dismayed to find a slightly rundown establishment with catering at supermarket standard cooked up by Susie, a recently employed young woman who also seems to do all the other routine activities in the building. Finances are clearly parlous. The students are an assorted bunch, mostly with minimal skills in the kitchen and all of the female members seem to be fans, even groupies, of Christian, so are miffed to discover that Paul, a less famous personality, has taken on the tutorial role temporarily, although cheered up a bit when he pays a visit to the classroom. Lesson One is “Knife Skills”, which Paul rounds off with the aforementioned chopper. Paul is living at home so leaves at the end of the day. Everyone else, including Christian, is staying on the premises. Returning the next morning, Paul notices broken glass outside the door to Christian’s little flat in the courtyard and goes to investigate, where he finds Christian in a nearly decapitated state with the chopper lying close by. Paul is the obvious suspect and must investigate what really happened while carrying on with the course.
This is a fairly straightforward cosy, murder mystery – bunch of people in a closed situation where motive is the route to identifying the killer; amateur sleuth striving to solve the mystery and prove his own innocence while the police are closed to other possibilities. The plot unrolls in a smooth fashion, there aren’t many twists, the guilty not too difficult to spot, the resolution sensible. The epilogue wraps up everyone’s story, which is nice but a bit long. Nothing really outstanding so it is 3 stars at most. However, I’m elevating it to 4 because of the quality of the writing, the light-hearted style, the character of Paul, and the recipes from Christian’s notebooks (worth a try – Murrin has written a lot of cookery books). I think this might be the first in a series and, with a bit more complex twisting, that would be welcome.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

I enjoyed this book. A good murder mystery debut read set in Belgravia at a cooking school.
Paul Delaware is a chef, covering for celebrity chef Christian who breaks his arm. Later when Christian is found dead the suspicion falls on Paul.
It’s brilliantly written and funny with lots of twists and turns and a great varied mix of interesting characters. I liked Paul and his backstory.
Overall, an enjoyable and entertaining read with some good recipes included throughout.
Definitely recommend this book if you enjoy murder mystery whodunnit’s. I look forward to reading future book from this author.
With thanks to #NetGallery and @Randomhouseuk for an eARC of #KnifeSkillsForBeginners in exchange for a honest review. All opinions are my own.
Book publishes 01 February 2024.

British celebrity Chef Orlando Murrin (a winner of Masterchef, food writer and podcaster for the BBC) has written a light and entertaining cosy mystery set in a Belgravia cooking school.

It all starts with Paul Delamare’s, old friend and fellow Chef Christian breaking his arm. Paul and Christian both trained as Chefs together with Christian going on to become a celebrity chef. However, when his chain of up market restaurants went into liquidation, he was offered a job teaching at Chester Square Cooking School, including accommodation in a flat behind the building. Although located in Belgravia in a magnificent old building, the school itself is run down and on its last legs financially, which is why Christian is begging Paul to step in and take his place teaching a week-long residential cooking course covering basic techniques.

Ten years previously, Paul met and married wealthy businessman Marcus Berens, moving into his small house in Belgravia and since then has worked freelance, including writing a monthly recipe and food styling section for Escape magazine. However, after Marcus died a few months ago, Paul has rarely left the house or seen anyone, except his friend Julie, Escape’s food editor. He decides the teaching job might be just what he needs to get out of the house and he finds that he is enjoying it, at least up to the point where a murder occurs and he and the students all become suspects.

This debut cosy mystery is quite a fun read, however I did feel that the characters needed more development. Paul is quite well fleshed out, but could do to grow further into a more solid personality. Rose, the owner of the cooking school, Rose, is quite bland and forgettable and the students on the course were flat and stereotypical, particularly the women making it difficult to remember who was who. Marcus’ son Jonny, who is waging a personal crusade against Paul, at first sparked some interest and could have been included more to cause conflict with Paul to liven up the plot. Julie is also a great character I would also have liked to see more personal interaction between her and Paul.

With Orlando Murrin being a Chef himself, the setting of a cooking school for this mystery is an inspired choice and I anticipated we would be treated to descriptions of wonderful food and recipes. However, perhaps because the cookery course was for beginners, the cooking was all very basic and not very exciting. Some recipes found by Paul in Christian’s personal notebook are included - one for a potato dish, strangely based on frozen hash browns, and one for rocky road, both uninspiring and disappointing choices. A recipe for a cake based on a traditional Cornish tea time treat called ‘Thunder and Lightning’ did however sound more interesting and innovative. Overall, a light, enjoyable read with the potential to go on to become a fun cosy mystery series, with stronger character development and inclusion of some delicious recipes.

This is a fun /cosy murder mystery .Set in Belgravia in a Cookery School ,a famous Chef is found with a cleaver in his head. His old friend Paul had been asked to teach his cookery class due to a broken arm .Everyone is a suspect lots of twists and turns and great characters .A really enjoyable read with the addition of some recipes .Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC .

Paul Delamare takes a job at an inclusive cookery school but then one of his students turns up dead.
Paul is suspect number one and he must find a way to prove his innocence before its to late.

A new series! I love getting in right at the start!

Paul Delamare is an experienced chef; when his friend Christian has an accident making him unable to continue teaching at a cookery school, he asks Paul to stand in. As the building is in Belgravia and not to far from Paul's home, he agrees. Meeting the students on the first day, Paul endeavours to stick to the curriculum - even if he thinks he could do better by himself. Then the unthinkable happens: a dead body turns up and the police have a favourite for the murder - Paul. It seems the only way to prove himself innocent would be to find the guilty party, and so he begins looking into the lives of everyone at the school . . .

This is an excellent debut novel. I enjoyed the concept and the writing cannot be faulted. With a good cast of varied characters I was interested to find out about them all. Cleverly plotted, I did have an idea of who the guilty party was = and I was half right. I hope we see more of Paul. Entertaining throughout, I'm very happy to give this one 4.5*.

My thanks to the publisher for my copy via NetGalley; this is - as always - my honest, original and unbiased review.