Everyone treats Billie's palate like it's Barry Zito's throwing arm in its prime, but, in fact, it's not exactly a novel talent. Anyone who tastes for a living learns to cultivate sense memories and build a mental database of flavors and scents, so that faced with a dish you can say this is cardamom, this is coriander, this is fenugreek, and that is turmeric. Hardly rocket science. For any food writer or recipe developer or (presumably) chef, identifying, remembering, and recalling flavors is a basic part of the necessary skill set.

So, that's the first 80 pages or so, until, as in life, Delicious! is abruptly shuttered, leaving Billie adrift but, weirdly, still employed as a lone phone voice kept on to honor the "Delicious! Guarantee," a longtime marketing gimmick that promised readers satisfaction with all the magazine's recipes or the cost of their ingredients back. The remaining two-thirds of the book becomes Scooby Doo with cell phones, as intrepid girl reporter Billie discovers, in a secret room in the magazine's long-locked library, a hidden! cache! of! nifty! letters! written by a perkily precocious girl named Lulu to none other but James Beard, who, as a gay soldier during World War II, had nothing better to do than share wartime-rationing cooking tips and canned life lessons with a chatty teenage pen pal from Akron, Ohio. One of the magazine's last librarians, obviously with too much time on his hands, has created an elaborate, yet essentially pointless, treasure hunt for the letters through the library's idiosyncratic card file, which Billie follows with breathless, Velma-worthy excitement.

If only, as readers, we could care about annoyingly chipper little Lulu, persecuted by mean teachers for her milkweed-foraging habits and fondness for pasta (enemy food, in that Axis-fearing era). Or about little Billie, who turns out to have a size-six killer bod AND fabulous fashion sense AND a trust fund on tap from The Cake Sisters, the wildly successful baking business she and her sister started as pre-teens and ran until college, when her absolutely, positively flawless older sister was run down by a speeding Jaguar as she carried the toppers for a $30,000 wedding-cupcake extravaganza across the street. (This is the perfectly perfect dead sister in whose shadow Billie has been willingly standing throughout the whole book, until Big Sis is revealed to have been snorting all her cake-baking profits up her nose, a habit proven after her death thanks to the meticulous written records kept by her coke dealer about all his clients. Because, of course, drug dealers: just like accountants that way.)

Occasionally, there are moments when Reichl's extensive knowledge of the actual New York food world peeks through. But the howlers outnumber the real world moments by the dozens. Like Billie's devoted boyfriend, Mitch, a well-regarded architectural historian and professor who is surely a little old to be dating a woman of barely legal drinking age. Mitch comes straight from the sensitive urban-hunk division of rom-com casting as he reaches beneath his platform bed, promising "and now for the major attraction." Handcuffs? Sex toys? Nope--just the ultimate foodie fantasy: an under-the-bed freezer drawer stocked with post-coital coffee ice cream, enough to make him worth at least a Ben & Jerry's-fueled booty call or two.

In interviews shortly after Gourmet closed, Reichl implied that another memoir, this time about her life at the magazine, was on its way. If you want the full Reichl-style meal, better wait for that one. Delicious! is all frosting and no filling.

Ruth Reichl is discussing Delicious! A Novel at the following Bay Area venues this week:

5/20, 7 p.m.
Commonwealth Club/JCC
3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto
More information about the event

5/21, 12:15 p.m.
Book Passage
51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera
More information about the event

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Delicious!: A Novel, by Ruth Reichl -- Marshmallow Fiction from Gourmet's Former Editor