Sweet Chef

Book excerpt: After a year at the Cook's Academy, Sally is handed a certificate of competence and slung out onto the job market. At 35, she wonders who will employ someone so overqualified and under-experienced, so jumps at the chance of a job in the Zoo, where she quickly finds that the chefs are more dangerous than the animals! Sweating in the intense heat of one of the hottest summers on record, Sal develops muscles as she rolls pastry for pies that would gladden the heart of Desperate Dan. Inevitably, the kids Cleo and Alex manage to escape their grandmother's clutches and turn up at the zoo, posing Sal a problem, not least in the romance department, Cleo now an extremely beautiful fifteen year old, knocking her mother into the shade, and throwing the monkeys into fits of jealousy when their keeper gets the hots for her. Add the Entertainers - re-enacting a bizarre 17th Century hanging every night, and you have a mix that is hotter than dynamite!