Sweet Revenge (Goldy Culinary Mystery, Book 14)

Diane Mott Davidson

Edition	Hardcover
List Price	$25.95
	$17.13 (Save 33%)

Published by	William Morrow
Release date	2007-08-21
ISBN	0060527331
Availability	Usually ships in 24 hours

Goldy Schulz is thrilled to be catering a holiday breakfast feast for the staff of the Aspen Meadow Library. But little does she know that on the menu, alongside the Great Expectations Grapefruit, Chuzzlewit Cheese Pie, and Bleak House Bars, is a large helping of murder.

While setting up at the library, Goldy spots a woman lurking in the stacks who bears a striking resemblance to Sandee Brisbane?the Sandee Brisbane who killed Goldy's ex-husband, the Jerk. But Sandee is supposed to be dead. Or so everyone believes.

Goldy's suspicions mount when the body of Drew Wellington, a former district attorney, is found in a corner of the library with a map worth thousands of dollars stashed in his clothing. She's convinced that Sandee is involved.

But the holiday madness is only just beginning for Goldy. Soon she's drawn into the dangerous, double-crossing world of high-end map dealing. And like the ghost of Christmas past, Sandee keeps making an appearance. Could she be out to prove that revenge is sweet?

Customer Reviews - courtesy of Amazon.com ( Marked4Sale.com is not responsible for review content )

repetative and boring

I've enjoyed the other Goldie books that I've read, but this one was really quite boring. Goldie comes off as more of a busybody in this than a sleuth and she really sticks her nose where it doesn't belong. She describes other characters as acquaintances or people she's met, but she bends over backwards to help them out of sticky situations that any normal person wouldn't be involved in. (When Patricia comes to her house because her lawyer told her to?!? What?) Yea, we get it Arch needs to clean his room, but do we really need the details? All the details about her driving made me nervous. Why is she chasing Sandee down? Why hasn't Tom arrested her for involving herself in a police investigation? This mystery seems disjointed and full of fluff. Not nearly as enjoyable as other Goldie books.

Sweet Revenge

Goldy Schlulz is back in this, the fourteenth entry in the series. Goldy is now 34 years old, the mother of a precocious 15-year-old boy. She is the owner of Goldilock's Catering, although she describes herself as follows: "First I was a mom and a wife, second I was a caterer, and third, every now and then people wanted me to figure out what had happened to their loved ones, loved ones who were victims of crimes."

This time around, Goldy is preparing to cater a party at the home of a very wealthy man whose hobby is map collecting. But not long before the scheduled event, one of the guests, a former District Attorney, is found dead in, of all places, the town library. When the dead man's fiancée, a former client and "sort of a friend" of Goldy, shows up at her door shortly afterwards, Goldy's ambivalence dial is turned up: Goldy cannot believe she is guilty, but the police certainly think she is, and promptly arrest her.

Complicating matters is that three weeks prior to these events Goldy was certain she had seen a young woman who six months before had admitted to killed Goldy's ex-husband, fondly remembered as "The Jerk," before apparently jumping to her death in a blazing inferno. That same young woman, Goldy believes, was sneaking around the library aisles just before the body of the dead man was discovered. Was the woman a phantom, as Goldy fears, or was she real, and what was her connection to the murder?

With the help of her best friend, Marla, who happens to be the other ex-wife of The Jerk, Goldy tries to discover the identity of the killer, to the dismay of her husband, an investigator with the Sheriff's Department. Always entertaining, as usual in this series, in addition to the solving of the mystery the reader is treated to the usual collection of mouth-watering recipes. Fans of this series will not be disappointed.

Another great book

I've read every book she's ever written and have never been disappointed. It's fun reading, then you can go and cook or bake up her recipes as well.

Go ahead, enjoy!

I loved this book! I have enjoyed every one of the Goldy tales and this one was one of the better reads! Great recipes are a bonus, too. Enjoy~

When Good Series Go Bad

This series used to be one of my favorites, but now it's gotten so bad that it's nearly unreadable.

The cooking/catering used to be a nice aside to the storyline. However, now it's taken over half the book with page after page after page dedicated to minute details about food storage, food preparation, food service and food cleanup. I found myself skipping over chunks at a time and not missing anything.

As many others have said, the book was also extremely repetitive with Goldy constantly stopping to recap what she'd learned. Over and over and over we had to read the same thing about one of the most boring subjects I've ever come across -- maps.

Goldy has also turned into a blithering idiot who can't seem to stand on her own two feet without constant reassurances from Tom. In one scene, she's driving on an icy interstate in a snowstorm and is hesitant to answer her phone in such bad driving conditions. However, after she does so and finds out it's Tom, she proceeds to not only keep talking to him, but to simper to him about how much she misses him and then call him back right after they hang up because he didn't tell her he loved her. Ugh. I nearly put the book down then and there.

And what's up with Tom? Most law enforcement professionals don't allow amateurs to help them with their cases. Not only does Tom allow it, but he encourages it -- telling Goldy confidential information, sending her out to talk to people, not saying a word to her when she does something idiotic like sneak into a crime scene and fall down a hill. His fellow police officers also don't do anything to discourage this -- for example, whisking Goldy away after she's just recklessly totalled her best friend's car and then dropping her off at the end of her street to walk home, which coincidentally just happens to be the scene of another murder Tom is investigating. The whole thing just became ludicrous after awhile.

DMD has made a nice living off this series, but when it's gotten as sloppy and bad as it has, it may be time to move on.