Oh, Canada

Two books down.... about 20 to go! I have just finished two books both set in Canada but on opposite sides of the country and opposite in most every other way as well.
I laughed my way through "Neil Flambe and the Marco Polo Murders" by Kevin Sylvester. I am not sure who this book will appeal to but I loved it. Neil is a 14 year old chef prodigy. That means he's really really good at cooking at a very very young age! Cooking is his life and he even owns his own restaurant where he goes after school. But Neil also has an outstanding sense of smell and he helps solves murders in his spare time. Set in Vancouver, many of the city's outstanding chefs are being murdered with notes left at the scene that chronicle Marco Polo's return trip to Venice from the court of Kublai Khan in China. This becomes very personal for Neil and for a time it looks like he may even be involved. Lots of cooking stuff in this book that, for me, is very entertaining. Did you notice how even his name is connected to cooking? Hope you will like it.

The second book is very different; dark, gruesome and violent. In "The Secret Ministry of Frost" by Nick Lake, Light is the name of a young girl whose father is a research scientist in Canada's Arctic. He has disappeared and Light meets up with a strange and unusual group of protectors to help find him. Inuit mythology is woven into this story with the main antagonist, a being named Frost, who with his band of horrific creatures, wants all mankind to die. While this book has garnered good reviews it is not my kind of book. I saw it through to the end but would like to hear what you think.

What are you reading today?