Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth (Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries with Recipes)

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Linda Shelnutt, April 21, 2006 (view all comments by Linda Shelnutt)
Heat The Kettle. Beat The Egg Whites. Quilt Amish Ambiance into ?Who Done It.?

Susannah?s screaming at a corpse on a quilt in the opening scene was an effective capture. The plot time regression, backtracking from ?murder-up-page-one,? trailing events and road-forks which may have contributed to the murder, was a narrative technique of literary lace.

The quilt was Amish and it had been spread, somehow wrongly, across a bed in the PenDutch Inn. Magdalena?s detailing the difference between a murdered corpse and a ?normal? dead body was an intriguing way to surge depth and reality onto the stage.

As she will do throughout the series, Magdalena Yoder comes grumbling to the rescue. There?s a lot to do to clean up a murder or two, not to mention catering to a full house of high brow guests paying hefty prices and expecting the best, even within Magda?s ALPO ambiance. ALPO, of course, is the Amish Lifestyle Plan Option at the Inn, which avails guests of a trip into the cultural snootiness of choosing to clean their own rooms and common areas. My curiosity peaks to uncover how and why each guest decides to handle (or not) the broom. ALPO is such a deal for discriminating character nuance with a single sweep.

I enjoyed observing the evolution of Magda?s narrative style in this pilot to such an auspicious, long-running series. I had to remind myself that at the point of writing and publishing this novel, Amish mysteries had not yet had the foundation which Tamar Myers brought to this amateur sleuth repertoire.

I enjoyed the way Myers toyed with the bright/dark balance within each character, including herself. No one was offered a free ride outside the box of the PenDutch?s sensitive, sagely satiric pen.

Nothing was left wondering here, except, if you had read this pilot prior to the publication of 13 or so sequels, you?d be not wondering if, but begging that Myers would cough up more and more PenDutch ambiance, to slide more cooks into the stew. That phenomenal publication story indeed has a good (never) ending, as Myers is still penning plush and posh.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780451182968

Author:

Myers, Tamar

Publisher:

Signet

Location:

New York, N.Y. :

Subject:

General

Subject:

Fiction

Subject:

Cookery

Subject:

Mystery & Detective - Series

Subject:

Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths

Subject:

Mystery & detective

Subject:

Women detectives

Subject:

Cookery, Mennonite

Subject:

Hotelkeepers

Subject:

Mennonites

Subject:

Pennsylvania Dutch Country (Pa.) Fiction.

Subject:

Pennsylvania Dutch Country

Subject:

Mystery & Detective - General

Subject:

Mystery fiction

Subject:

Cookery -- Pennsylvania.

Copyright:

c199

Edition Number:

mass market

Edition Description:

Paperback

Series:

Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery

Series Volume:

4

Publication Date:

19950801

Binding:

Paperback

Grade Level:

General/trade

Language:

English

Illustrations:

Yes

Pages:

256

Dimensions:

6.91x4.25x.72 in. .26 lbs.