Forbidden Fruit - a Corinna Chapman Mystery - 2010 Davitt Readers Choice Winner

Book Summary

Author: 

Kerry Greenwood

Publisher: 

Allen & Unwin

Copyright Year: 

2009

ISBN: 

9781741759822

No of Pages: 

312

Price: 

22.99

Review By: 

Tanya King

Book Synopsis: 

Corinna Chapman, owner of Earthly Delights, detests Christmas. The shoppers are frantic and the heat oppressive. Neither of which this perfect size 20 with a genius for baking breads finds congenial. She's dreaming of quiet, air-conditioned comfort but instead finds herself dealing with a rose-loving donkey named Serena, a maniacal mother with staring eyes, a distracted assistant searching for the perfect muffin recipe, her friend the fearless witch Meroe, and the luscious Daniel with whom she'd like to spend a lot more time.

But Daniel is on the hunt to find two young runaways, Brigid and Manny. This simple Romeo and Juliet romance though is not as straightforward as it seems and they will go a long way to ensure they're not found. When Corinna and Daniel find that Brigid is on the streets, heavily pregnant and in danger, the stakes rise.

With the help of a troupe of free-spirited freegans, some very clever internet hackers and a bunch of vegans, Corinna and Daniel go head-to-head with a sinister religious cult on a mission and a band of Romany gypsies out for revenge in a wild and wonderful chase against the clock.

Forbidden Fruit is the fifth in the Corinna Chapman series by Kerry Greenwood. Greenwood is a prodigious writer, best known for her Phryne Fisher novels. Forbidden Fruits’ Corinna is an ex-accountant who left her life of regular hours and tailored suits behind to run a small, successful bakery off Flinders Lane in Melbourne, Earthly Delights.

Those who know and love Greenwood’s novels, will relish the chance to return to Corinna’s cosy world of 4am starts, loyal apprentices and bakery staff, beautiful Israeli lovers and, of course, a multitude of pampered cats. Forbidden Fruit is set just prior to Christmas, a time of year Corinna abhors, and Greenwood deftly mixes pagan and Christian symbols, such as a pregnant teen runaway, star-crossed lovers, a rose muffin loving donkey, a religious cult, militant vegans and anarchistic freegans. Corinna’s lover, Daniel, is on the search for the two runaways, Manny and Brigid with Brigid heavily pregnant. Greenwood revisits areas she has delved into before, specifically, what some people will do when taking their beliefs to the fundamentalist and rigid extremes. In Forbidden Fruit, she explores this through the mental and physical suffering inflicted on Brigid and her younger sister by their family in the name of an extreme religious cult, and via the extreme and disturbing actions of an equally inflexible group of animal rights vegans.

Forbidden Fruitis an inviting, hot chocolate of a book with Greenwood’s well-loved eccentric band of characters. It is best savoured slowly, preferably with a glass of your favourite tipple and a preferred nibble or three.