Pequeñas Infamias. The New York Times Book Review

The fluffy tone of Little Indiscretions (Random House, $23.95), which won Spain’s Planeta Prize for Carmen Posadas in 1998, is just the melt-in-your-mouth frosting on an otherwise tart — and surprisingly substantial — comic mystery about the perils of gossip. When the body of Nestor Chaffino, a pastry chef ‘‘renowned for his masterful way with a chocolate fondant,’’ is discovered in the freezer of the estate on the Costa del Sol where his company is catering a dinner, everyone gives up a shout: ‘‘Thank God for household accidents!’’ But was it really an accident? It seems as if Nestor was writing an expose of his rich clients’ foibles, some of them well worth the price of murder to suppress. Posadas’s whimsical style, which holds its humor in Christopher Andrews’s airy translation from the Spanish, gives her story the charms of any lightweight whodunit. But her characters’ secrets are truly dark, and the irony is heavier than any souffle that Nestor would ever whip up.

The New York Times
Crime By Marilyn Stasio