Assault and Pepper by Tamar Myers

I've been reading Tamar Myers' Magdelena Yoder mysteries for about two years now (or is it 3?) and this one blew me away, mystery wise. I always enjoy these books, they're short, very witty, and Mags is a hilarious character to read about. She owns a lucrative inn in the PA town of Hernia, where the population tends to be either Amish, like Mags' ancestors or Mennonite, like Mags herself.

In this book, I would say that Myers really shook up the town of Hernia in a really big way. Normally the murder mysteries that occur are related to inn guests or other outsiders, so that the town characters themselves remain fairly unchanged. But in this book, Myers drastically changed the lives of four of the "regulars" in her books.

The mystery revolves around the murder of Mags' minister, Rev. Shrock. Magdelena always liked her Rev., although his wife Lodema was her nemesis. In this book, the Rev. is dead, Lodema goes off her rocker and is institutionalized, and the killer revealed was a huge surprise.

Unfortunately, my desire not to give the book away will lead to the fact that this review is suddenly cut a little short, since talking much about it will no doubt give it away to someone who likes Myers and hasn't read this one in the series yet.

Suffice it to say, I found the ending a big surprise, something that doesn't happen much in low key mystery series like this one. I don't always figure them out, but it usually isn't quite so shocking as this particular book. But yay for Tamar Myers! As I've said before, I like the series that go forward in time the best, and the deaths and arrests in this book will give some fresh blood and new plot lines to the series that should really shake things up and make it more interesting to read future volumes!

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

Well.... I haven't written about this book yet even though I finished it a week ago, because I am not sure how I feel about it.

First let me say that I read the book AFTER I saw the movie. Very good thing. I adored the movie. It was 2 hours of bliss. I am glad I saw the movie first because I think I liked the book better than I would have had I not an image of Julie Powell via Nora Ephron's movie.

But this is a book blog, not a movie blog, so I'm just gonna get to the book. I love the idea. Julie Powell's cooking project is very interesting and fun to read about. But the rest of Julie? Not so much. She's kind of a big whiner. I think it is because she wanted to be an actress and ended up a secretary. She clearly believed herself better than her job. I understand that most people don't aspire to secretary-hood in their lives, but I just wonder why Julie thought she was SO awesome that she was having a life crises over the fact that she didn't like her job. She had her health, a nice husband who put up with her, income enough to buy all the stuff needed to make all Julia Childs' French food, friends, and family.

I know it is probably not fair to criticize a blogger/autobiographer for making something all about them, but somehow, Julie Powell did it in a very obnoxious way. I have read TONS of books by people writing about themselves, and Julie Powell did not succeed in the way others have. The best comic "blogger" style writing is self-deprecating. Take the late, Great Erma Bombeck. A really smart, clever woman, but she was always the butt of her own jokes in her books in a way that made you want to be her daughter, sister, next door neighbor, etc. Julie admits faults but at the same time seems to either not believe them or feel she's justified in them. I was pretty put off by her.

I know I may have readers of all political stripes here on this blog, so I am not in the business of making politics part of the discourse but I have to say one thing--Julie Powell, a self-avowed Democrat working for a government agency during the Bush administration, was very hateful and nasty toward Republicans. She made snide comments about the GOP as though it is common knowledge they have no style of dress, enjoy being mean or cruel, generally making them her personal punching bag on numerous occasions in the book. It's obviously a-OK for Powell to love her political views and think she's right, but I don't understand why a political ideal or view makes a person automatically horrible and unworthy of respect. I would be just as annoyed if she had been a Republican dissing Dems, it was a glaring example of Julie Powell's inherent unpleasantness. She even had an aunt in the book that she admitted to loving very much but STILL harped on the fact that aunt was a Republican as though that was like admitting that the aunt was also a criminal or something. Totally uncalled for and obnoxious. I guess given Powell's attitude, I should just assume she wouldn't want the likes of me reading her books, and therefore if I'm offended it's my own fault?

Whatever. Point is, I didn't like the book very much even though I was very excited to read it. The cooking passages were entertaining whenever she wasn't whining about something while writing about cooking.

I do, however, have Julia Child's memoir, My Life in France, on hold at the library and I dearly hope that it is NOT a disappointment.

Father's Day Murder by Leslie Meier

The Leslie Meier Lucy Stone mystery series is one of my all time favorite. Each title is holiday related, and this book obviously takes place around Father's Day.

Lucy Stone is a married mother of 4 in Tinker's Cove, Maine where she writes for the local newspaper. In this installment, Lucy's paper wins an award and she and her boss, Ted, win an all-expense paid trip to a week long convention in Boston. So Lucy packs off to go, leaving her kids and husband home to fend for themselves.

While at the conference, a man is murdered. The victim is the patriarch of a wealthy family that runs a newspaper syndicate. Lucy knows some of the family members because they vacation in Tinker's Cove, and her natural curiosity leads her to start researching the family and trying to solve the case.

The main reason I love Lucy Stone books is the mixture of the everyday middle class family interactions and the small town atmosphere with the mysteries on the side. This book was not quite as fun because she wasn't home during the majority of the story. But I did enjoy the descriptions of Lucy shopping at Filene's basement and visiting the Isabelle Stewart Gardiner museum while in Boston. I figured out the killer pretty easily, but I didn't mind, it was still a fun read.

Murder on Astor Place by Victoria Thompson

I'm so enthusiastic about this new series! Victoria Thompson has written a Gaslight series. the books take place in the 1890's in NYC. The main character is Sarah Decker Brandt, widow of a doctor and herself a midwife. She is from one of the 400--the NYC old money high society list of VIP families, but she's estranged from them and living on her own.

A young woman who lives in the boarding house where Sarah delivered her most recent baby is murdered and it turns out Sarah knows her from her former high society life. This leads Sarah to assist police detective Frank Malloy in unraveling the mystery of why a wealthy young woman from a good family is dead in a seedy boarding house.

The book was fast-paced and full of twists and turns. It was not light hearted--it was pretty dark and full of commentary on the social strata in that era of history in New York. Some of the dialogue was a bit heavy handed and cheesy but over all, the book was interesting and totally held my interest. I'm very much looking forward to the rest of this series.

Keepsake Crimes by Laura Childs

I've read nearly every book in Laura Childs' Tea Shop Mysteries series so I was interested to try her other series about scrapbooking. Normally I am not a scrapbooker, but I like books about shop owners, and their regulars and that type of thing, so I was sure I'd enjoy more of Laura Childs' writing.

I wasn't too disappointed. The Tea Shop books take place in Charleston, SC and there is a lot of that city and its high society lifestyle outlined in each book. The Scrapbooking series takes place in another great Southern city, New Orleans. The heroine is Carmela, a woman who is currently separated from her husband who is part of one of the city's "old money" families. Her husband, Shamus, has left her and his position at the family bank to find himself and live in the bayou taking photographs of nature. Carmela isn't happy about this, but she musters on, running her scrapbooking shop.

The mystery emerges during one of the Mardi Gras parades, when a notable member of the Pluvius krewe dies on one of the floats. He was poisoned, and the cops are interested in Shamus as a suspect. Even though she's annoyed at him for dumping her for his camera, Carmela is not ready to believe Shamus is a murderer, so she starts digging into the murder to clear his name.

The relationship between Shamus and Carmela isn't resolved, although it is clear that he still cares about her and she loves him. I hope that the author doesn't drag this out forever in the series!

Overall, the mystery was kind of silly, I guessed the murder motive in the first chapter after the guy was killed, but I liked the details about the city and the colorful New Orleans characters in the book.

A Catered Murder by Isis Crawford

Thus begins the reading of another new series about food and murder. This is about two sister, Libby and Bernie. Libby's a plump, down to earth soul who runs a shop "Little Taste of Heaven" and does catering in New Jersey. Bernie is her flashy sister who lands back in town after a bad break up with her LA boyfriend. Bernie is good with food, too, having jobs on her resume like food stylist, restaurant critic, and other related employment.

Bernie seems to be back in NJ for an extended stay, so she dives in, helping Libby with the shop and catering.

The sisters cater a high school reunion dinner honoring a local author who has a cult following for his romantic vampire novels. When the author is poisoned at the dinner, Libby is first a suspect, then her best friend. Libby and Bernie's father, Sean, is a retired cop and he guides the girls in some tips at solving the crime and clearing the names of the innocent.

Sean has some kind of disease, it isn't described by name, but he's in a wheel chair and it sounds like Parkinson's/Lou Gehrig's or something like that.

I loved the book. It's funny and extremely fast to read. There were about 9 recipes from the Vampire reunion dinner and lots of other good foodie moments. The mystery solving was fun as a team effort, too. Libby and Bernie worked together and separately, adding a dimension to the mystery formula that I liked. Also the "let's go talk to Dad" parts, where Sean dispensed advice and insight to his daughters was very like able, too. I'm definitely hooked on Isis Crawford's series and am looking forward to more of the sisters' sleuthing!

Next on deck: the first in a new series by the author of the Tea Shop Mysteries.

The Chocolate Bridal Bash by Joanna Carl

The Chocoholic Mysteries series is one I began reading right after my son was born, so over 2 years on this very cute series.

It is about a woman, Lee McKinney who lives in a resort town on Lake Michigan and works as an accountant for her aunt's Chocolade, or chocolate shop. There her aunt uses classic Dutch techniques to create wonderful chocolates for customers and mail order clients.

In past books, Lee began a relationship with a man in town and in this book, she's about to marry him. But her mother is being oddly reluctant to return to the small resort town, even though it is her only daughter's wedding.

It turns out that when Lee's mother was just out of high school she ran away from town on what should have been her wedding day, never to return. The groom in question was found dead of an apparent suicide that same time and Lee's mom never looked back.

Clues indicate that her mother's groom wasn't a suicide at all, leading Lee and her fiance to hunt down the truth so that her mother can feel comfortable in Warner Pier and their wedding can be a happy occasion.

I like three main things about this volume in the Chocolate series.

a) Lee got married. I like it when books continue on in chronological time in a reasonable way--I don't like it when romances in these books are all Nancy Drew/Ned Nickerson--nobody ages, and nobody commits. I don't even care that much if couples break up and get back together a few times before living happily ever after, but just don't have stagnant beaus that don't go anywhere.

b) the focus of the mystery didn't have anything to do with the actual wedding. I love a good "closed set" mystery or small town mystery where the hero or heroine stumbles upon a dead body and solves the crime. But I would find it very upsetting and incredibly unbelievable if there were murder involving Lee's wedding and she was able to put aside grief or stress and solve a crime and blissfully marry on the last page of the book. Good on Joanna Carl for coming up with a wedding related mystery without compromising the main character's happiness.

c) the book takes place in spring and there was a chocolate mold used by the chocolatiers that I loved the description of--bunnies playing jazz instruments! How cute would that be to put in an Easter Basket?

Next on the list: another new series w/recipes I've never dipped into before!