My Reading Nook

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I’m honored that noted blogger Alan Jobe has consented to write some guest reviews for the Nook. This is the first of what I hope are many insightful reviews.

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It is very striking to me when perusing the Mystery sections, that there seem to be more books written with female protagonists than with male ones.   When I stop to think of it,  there are at least four female detective series that I read faithfully and honestly don’t remember the last time I read a Mystery with a male detective.  Which perhaps speaks more to my tastes than anything else, since there are certainly plenty of male detectives in the stacks. I have twice previously written about Diane Mott Davidson’s series of culinary mysteries featuring Goldy Schulz– the caterer who is married to a homicide detective in Aspen Meadow, Colorado.

For more than ten years now, I have been following Goldy’s career as a caterer who is forever getting into sticky situations when people end up getting murdered at the fancy parties where she caters.    Those who have read any or all of the previous fourteen volumes in this series will be immediately at home in, her latest, Fatally Flaky.   This time out, Goldy has been hired to cater the thrice re-scheduled wedding of an older bride whose temperament and demanding personality have earned her the nickname “Bridezilla”.   Sadly,  it is not the bride who is killed but rather Goldy’s godfather, Jack, who has recently moved out to Colorado from New Jersey and settled into an older house just across the street from the Schulz’s,  As well as his best friend and drinking and fishing buddy Dr. Finn, who has also been Goldy and her family’s personal physician, prior to his retirement.

As always, Goldy’s catering assistant Julian and best friend and local gossip queen Marla are on hand to help Goldy with the cooking and social aspects of catering a major event and solving the inevitable mystery.   Davidson remains in fine form and in this volume especially,  I found myself quite literally laughing out loud at many of the situations Davidson contrives for her characters and the very witty remarks they spit out.   About half way through the novel,  I found myself thinking that these “Goldy” books are in fact very formulaic,  but a chapter or two (and several Loud laughing fits) later,  I continued to be hooked and hurried to finish the book and find out who the killer is.  I was just a little disappointed that Goldy’s son, Arch, appears only briefly this time out,  though the fact that he is now a teenager and spends his summer away from home with his friends is certainly believable.   As always,  recipes for some of the dishes that Goldy, Julian and the other characters cook are included in an appendix following the story.  (I am going to try very hard to get my partner Ron to make Nutcase Cranberry Apricot Bread which sounds WONDERFUL!)

If you are a cooking enthusiast, a foodie and/or a mystery lover,  Fatally Flaky is sure to please and is Highly Recommended.

Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson
Published by Harper Collins 2009
ISBN: 9780061348136

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