Anyone who has ever worked in a bookstore has heard the question, “I’m taking a vacation to (insert destination). Do you have any books set there?” Sure. Going to San Francisco? Here’s The Maltese Falcon. A trip to Venice? Try Donna Leon. Miami? Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen. London?…How big is your suitcase?
There is no better way to experience a city vicariously than by reading a good crime novel. Crime authors claim ownership of a city by shattering its polished facade and revealing the ugly truths lurking in the shadows. They take readers on a ride through society’s margins: cops, gangsters, misfits, addicts, and the lifelong losers who can’t catch a break. We’re relieved to emerge from the book unscathed, and we’re grateful for the thrills provided by this glimpse into darkness. If you were ever to be so lucky, what better tour guide could you find than a crime writer? None, except, perhaps, a chef-turned-crime-writer.
Watching one of Anthony Bourdain’s food-centric travel shows you quickly realized that you were in the hands of an author. Bemused, enraptured or outraged, his monologues and narration were always elegant and captivating. Food was only the entry point, but it was the stories attached to the food that seemed to matter most to Bourdain. After decades working behind the scenes in kitchens, Bourdain had a sharp eye for finding stories off the beaten path. Of course he was a writer. His books of confessional kitchen memoir and travel nonfiction were massive bestsellers. But before Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain had an earlier literary career, one whose influence would continue into his television work; he was a mystery writer.
Fast, funny, and profane, the man couldn’t write a boring sentence, especially when it came to the kitchen.Anthony Bourdain’s first published book was 1995’s Bone in the Throat: A Novel of Death and Digestion. It was followed by two more crime novels, Gone Bamboo published in 1997, and The Bobby Gold Stories first published in the United Kingdom and released in the United States in 2003. Reading Bourdain’s crime fiction is a delight. Like many first crime novels, Bone in the Throat feels like an autobiographical novel contoured to fit the genre. In the case of Bourdain, that’s not a bad thing at all. Years after reading it, I couldn’t tell you what the plot is, other than it involves a restaurant and the mafia, but I can vividly recall the Bourdain stand-in—sous chef Tommy—as he preps for dinner service at the restaurant: taking his favorite pot out of hiding, rounding up scraps for stock, starting sauces and soups, and taking a couple quick snorts from the head chef’s secretly stashed cocaine. While other crime writers have tantalizingly featured food in their work, no one wrestled the food mystery away from the cats-and-knitting cozy crowd like Bourdain. Fast, funny, and profane, the man couldn’t write a boring sentence, especially when it came to the kitchen.
Long after publishing his last novel, Anthony Bourdain’s love of crime fiction continued to be evident in his TV shows No Reservations and Parts Unknown. Bourdain was a crime fiction connoisseur and entire episodes would be stylized as homages to his favorite novels and films. He frequently listed among his favorite authors giants of the genre such as Elmore Leonard, John le Carré, and Ross Macdonald, and lesser known though equally deserving authors including Charles McCarry and Daniel Woodrell. Bourdain held special reverence for one of America’s greatest unsung novelists regardless of genre, George V. Higgins, and his 1971 masterpiece The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which Bourdain called his favorite crime novel of all time. Set in the grimy barrooms of Boston, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a dialogue-driven tale of hapless smalltime hoods. The book is all voice, delivered with an authenticity that reads like an FBI wiretap transcript. It’s easy to see why Bourdain held it in such high esteem. Fittingly, the Boston episode of No Reservations was filmed in the style of the 1973 film adaptation of The Friends of Eddie Coyle. It was suitably sordid.
Anthony Bourdain frequently featured authors as guests on his shows, seeing the world of their books for himself. He ate squirrel with Daniel Woodrell in the Ozarks, drank with Nick Tosches in New York, sampled chicken and waffles with Jerry Stahl in Los Angeles, and feasted on half-smokes and chili with George Pelecanos in Washington D.C. It was Bourdain’s segment with Pelecanos that best captured the essence of both of their work. Pelecanos called the D.C. of his books “the other city,” one where a politician never appears on the page. When Bourdain asked Pelecanos about the racial tensions of the 1960s, Pelecanos described working at his Greek immigrant father’s diner with its all-black staff, separated from the white clientele by the lunch counter, saying, “that counter was more than a piece of formica.”
I had the chance to run a book signing for Anthony Bourdain in 2016. It was only then that the magnitude of his celebrity struck me. I had previously orchestrated many large author events for successful writers, rockstars, movie stars, and presidential candidates, but none of them stirred up such fervor as Anthony Bourdain, a chef-turned-writer who appeared on TV. Despite his immense popularity, there was something about Bourdain that made you feel like he was letting you in on a secret. Here was a wildly popular TV host who didn’t condescend to the masses. He conveyed his passions to the viewer, no matter how esoteric. His work felt conspiratorial, pulling back the curtain on the restaurant business and then the world. He shared his personal demons just as he shared his impeccable taste in food, film, and books. We all felt like his travel companions and his confidants. We all felt like his friends.
