Format:Paperback Several years before hitting the nonfiction bestseller lists with Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour, former chef Bourdain penned two crime novels. The first of these opens as follows: "Two-hundred-and-eighty-pound Salvatore Pitera, in a powder-blue jogging suit and tinted aviator glasses, stepped out of Frank's Original Pizza onto Spring Street. He had a slice of pizza in one hand, too hot to eat, and he was blowing on it as he waddled through traffic."If you like that sentence, you'll probably like this breezy and very gory debut which weaves cuisine and wiseguys into a satisfying little crime novel. The story concerns Brooklyn sous-chef Tommy, who is caught between mobster family members and the feds. All he wants to do is be left alone to cook, but people getting whacked, tortured, and dismembered keep interrupting him. Bourdain does a great job of both incorporating all his kitchen insider knowledge and the rhythm of mobster conversation and lingo into a fast moving pageturner.This debut was closely followed by the much less satisfying Gone Bamboo, which picks up where this leaves off. Bourdain then turned to nonfiction, before returning to the crime genre with the brand new book The Bobby Gold Stories.