Book 5, 2021
Jan. 22nd, 2021 07:49 pm
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I only had two chapters left in my book at work; therefore, I brought it home yesterday and finished reading it. The book was Murder by the Slice by Livia J Washburn. It's the second part of her "Fresh-Baked" mystery series. Narrative is in third person, but it primarily follows retired school teacher Phyllis Newsom.
Phyllis gets roped in to helping a local PTO with a fund-raising carnival when her friend and housemate, fellow retired teacher Carolyn, convinces Phyllis to join her. One of the first things Phyllis realizes is that the president of the PTO, Shannon Dunstan, is a witch with a capital B. Nevertheless, she and Carolyn agreed to help, and they stick to their guns. They are tasked with the bake sale portion of the fund raiser. While Phyllis and Carolyn are manning the booth, Shannon is murdered in a school hallway. It's determined the murder weapon was one the women had been using to slice cakes and other baked goods. When the police, including Phyllis' son Mike, seem to focus on the wrong person, Phyllis can't help but do some sleuthing on her own.
I picked this book up at a second-hand store, and I'm glad I didn't pay more than $2.00 for it. First of all, Phyllis owns a large house, and she rents rooms to three other retired teachers: Carolyn, Eve, and Sam. It's kinda-sorta like the Golden Girls, except Sam is a guy. Throughout the book, however, I found myself wondering if this was a household of mature adults or a junior high cheer camp. Eve has the hots for Sam (who does nothing to encourage her behavior), and she became an outright shrew whenever she discovered that Phyllis and Sam had the audacity to be alone somewhere, even in the kitchen. Good grief. On top of that, Carolyn and Phyllis were uber-competitive when it came to their baked goods, to the point that I felt like knocking their heads together and sending them to their rooms. Second, when Phyllis was baking, the author felt it necessary to provide in-depth play by play of every step of the process. All I need to know is that she mixed the batter and put the cake in the oven; I don't need to read about how she measured out each ingredient and mixed them together and prepared her pans and blah blah blah. Third, when Phyllis suspected that Shannon was having an affair with the husband of one of the other PTO moms, she took it upon herself to question him about it. OMG, it is not your job! Tell the police and butt out. Fourth, even when writing in third person pov, the narrative should follow one character. In this book, however, a few chapters (just a few, mind you!) were from Mike's pov. Just no. Finally, the blurb on the back of the book strongly indicated that Phyllis would need to clear her name, since she'd touched the murder weapon, but she was never once under suspicion. Way to be misleading about the plot! Oh, one more thing: there was a cat on the cover of the book, but no cat was found between the covers of the book. Misleading!
Favorite line: "When it comes to death, women bring food and men carry the coffin."
I won't be reading any other books in this series. The writing was fine, but I did not find Phyllis a likable character, and I won't waste any more time reading about her brand of sleuthing.
Three stars