During his month-long sojourn in chef's school in Georgetown, Texas, retired scientist and newspaper columnist known now as the Trashy Gourmet, Adam Thomas once again finds himself embroiled in the middle of a murder mystery. Adam is there when someone stabs Chef Elacroix with one of the Chef's customized carving knives. It is a crime in which Adam becomes a consultant to his friend Captain Roland Waits of the Georgetown Police Department in order to carve out clues that the police can't. Together with his girlfriend, Kathy Rossi, Adam sifts through facts, questions fellow students, and narrowly avoids becoming one of the increasing number of corpses. Adam entangles the reader in a rapid-fire adventure--hashing through the worlds of cooking, drugs, forgeries, antique smuggling and sailing to uncover the hardboiled truth and crack the case.