CRIMINAL PURSUITS
‘Tis the season to gain a few pounds. A couple of these mysteries have the potential to add girth to your waistline by including mouth-watering recipes.
If devouring Diane Mott Davidson’s newest whodunit in a single sitting is any reliable indicator, then KILLER PANCAKE (Bantam: $19.95, 301 pp.) was a delicious hit. This marks the fifth culinary mystery featuring Goldy Bear, whose Goldilocks Catering always neatly figures into solving the murders that dot the Aspen Meadows, Colo., landscape.
Davidson, who has a flair for storytelling, brings back a familiar cast that includes catering assistant Julian. Davidson crafts unforgettable characters. The darkest is Goldy’s ex-husband, who still terrifies her: “Any moment and this man who worked out with the fanaticism of an Olympic athlete could take hold of one of my wrists and shatter it against the table with such force that I wouldn’t be able to knead bread for a year.”
Goldy’s latest assignment is serving a luncheon (recipes included to a cosmetic firm whose testing policies have made it the target of an animal rights group, Spare the Hares. While hauling 40 pounds of food from her van into the banquet hall, Goldy hears a squeal of tires and a loud thump, and dead on the pavement lies Julian’s new girlfriend and the firm’s top saleswoman. The story takes off at a rapid clip as Goldy hunts for the killer and discovers along the way that espresso can save your life.
Susan Wittig Albert’s ROSEMARY REMEMBERED (Berkeley Crime: $19.95, 295 pp.) is one of the best-written and well-plotted mysteries I’ve read in a long time. Ex-lawyer and herb-shop owner China Bayles lives with former cop Mike McQuaid and his 11-year-old son. When China finds her tax accountant murdered in McQuaid’s pickup, she knows there is trouble ahead.
First, the dead woman bears an uncanny resemblance to China. Then she learns that a convicted murderer, who has sworn to get even with McQuaid for putting him behind bars, has been paroled. Set in the imaginary town of Pecan Springs during a sizzling Texas heat wave, the story unfolds briskly and with wry humor with a host of quirky characters.
Whoever is coming up with Tamar Myer’s book titles (remember “Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth”?) ought to win an award. PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY AND CRIME (Doubleday: $21.95, 270 pp.) is set in Hernia, Pa., a quaint town where Amish-Mennonite innkeeper Magdalena Yoder runs a chic hostelry. The wisecracking middle-aged spinster goes Hollywood when she rents out the PennDutch Inn to Runs and Reels Productions for a movie and the whole town turns out to audition. Then the assistant director gets pitch-forked in the barn and everyone is a suspect. Her main character’s sarcasm wears a bit thin and the plot is hokey, but the writing is breezy and the recipes are to die for.
Food is fun but cats touch the heart. If choreographer George Balanchine could teach his cat, Mourka, to perform jetes, it is just as credible that author Rita Mae Brown could glean whodunits with her favorite feline, Sneaky Pie Brown.
PAY DIRT: OR, ADVENTURES AT ASH LAWN (Bantam: $21.95, 251 pp., illustrations by Wendy Wray) , the fourth Mrs. Murphy caper by the Browns, brings back the familiar characters: Mary Minor (Harry) Haristeen, the postmistress of Crozet, Va.; Mrs. Murphy, the gray tiger-striped cat, and Tee Tucker, the Welsh corgi, who are the real sleuths in the story.
Harry and her pets are enduring a dull summer until a tough-talking biker from California dressed in black-leather arrives at Ash Lawn, the historic home of President James Monroe, demanding to see his girlfriend, Malibu. But he is murdered before he can find her. Two more locals show up dead and it’s up to the precocious pets to solve the case.
Fun, without being stupidly cute, the book’s strong point is the author’s acerbic humor.
Mary Higgins Clark’s newest mystery involves an escaped cop killer, a 7-year-old missing boy and a St. Christopher medal. SILENT NIGHT (Simon & Schuster: $16, 154 pp.) begins on Christmas Eve in New York City. Catherine Dornan’s husband has just undergone serious surgery. Hoping to divert her two sons from worrying about their father, she takes the boys to Rockefeller Center to see the famous Christmas tree. But while the three are listening to Christmas carols, the youngest boy sees a thief steal his mother’s wallet, which contains the medal the family plans to give to their ailing father. Impulsively, he follows the pickpocket into the subway and a tension-filled journey ensues. The author’s books remind me of watching a daytime soap opera. Someone is always in peril. There is a flair for creating a moral message, but it’s one that evaporates quickly.