he Devil's Cook (April 1966)

Police Captain Bartholdi sometimes indulged himself in a harmless fantasy. His thoughts, he would imagine, were irresponsible imps that wriggled out of his head and scampered around with an abandon that was often embarrassing. A woman had been kidnapped. The woman was dead. Bartholdi was convinced that a murderer was at that moment having a grim laugh at his expense. He knew who the murderer was. He would have bet his pension and his sacred soul that he knew. But he could not, knowing, prove what he knew. He needed confirmation of one critical point. From among his antic imps he culled the three that had directed his mind to its present state:

• One newspaper too many.
• A girl who slept too soundly.
• And, most important of all, a ragout with too many onions.

The student and junior-faculty residents of a small apartment house in a university town find themselves in a thickening stew when the house sexpot suddenly vanishes, and suave Captain Bartholdi investigates the possibility that she was murdered either by her cuckolded professor husband or one of her lovers or a woman on whose man the victim had been poaching.

Third ghost-written Ellery Queen book by Fletcher Flora. Nevins called it an implausible tale, poorly plotted and characterized and written in a repulsively arch style that’s a lot less humorous than it tries to be. He goes by stating that for some reason (perhaps because he was a gourmet chef himself) Anthony Boucher loved this entry, describing it (June 19, 1966) as “far and away better than most of the Ellery Queen paperback originals: a good conservative straight whodunit about a Midwest college town, with a well-clued puzzle, an attractive (and quite non-procedural) police detective, and a promising recipe for Students’ Ragout as the focus of the murder-problem.” 

Bacon 
1 pound lean round steak 
salt and pepper 
2 carrots, slices thin 
2 medium onions sliced thin 
4 medium potatoes, sliced a little thicker 
water 
1 cup red wine