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Fiction. Mystery. Get ready for a smorgasbord of delicious suspense prepared by Goldy Bear, an irrepressible mistress of menus and amateur sleuth. Filled with a cast of colorful characters and superb recipes, Catering to Nobody is the first in a series that has made Diane Mott Davidson a bestselling author and the Queen of the Culinary Mystery. Goldy Bear, recently divorced, has made a home for herself and her young son in scenic Aspen Valley, Colorado. There, calls for Goldilock's Catering have been steady enough to pay the bills. But when a mourner is felled by rat poison during a funeral buffet Goldy is serving, the police quickly close her business. Now it's up to Goldy to find the rat who has tainted her food and her reputation. As the mystery unfolds, its tension is sweetened by delectable recipes, including Goldy's Dream Cake, Dungeon Bars, and Honey Ginger Snaps.… (more)
User reviews
Sue Grafton recommends on the cover... so I thought I'd give it a whirl... adequate, not special as a mystery... I am incredibly tired of the protagonist who's clueless... as if there weren't other ways to clue in the reader... protagonist claims to be a second-wave feminist... written in
Also, the romantic interest
I do like Goldie's eleven year old son, Art--he seems like a real boy for once--not just played for cuteness. Beyond that, although I found Goldy likable, I didn't feel anything about the book lifted it above routine. Good recipes make a fine cookbook, but they're not enough to make for a tasty mystery. Hell, they were annoying, right smack in the middle of scenes and even sentences rather than at the beginning or end of chapters like in Like Water for Chocolate or at the end of the book.
Goldy uses her divorce settlement to start a catering business. When her son's teacher commits suicide, she does the food for the wake. While
While trying to get to the bottom of the poisoning and Arch's teacher's death, Goldy has to deal with horrible ex-husband and former in-laws, and her son's increasingly disturbing behavior.
Published in 1990, the book was a touch dated. The game Dungeons and Dragons was featured as part of the plot line. The game was very popular about that time and made headlines. So, there was maybe a touch of nostalgia.
The recipes were awesome however, and I loved Tom. Great banter between Goldy and Tom. The mystery is solid and the story was absorbing. Over all a B+
The book opens with Goldy catering the wake for Arch's teacher. While Goldy just wants to get through
As this is the first book, a lot of the character dynamics from later books aren't there. Instead of Julian, for instance, there's a ditzy roommate who while funny in her own right, doesn't play off Goldy and Arch in quite the same way. Finally, Tom Schulz who plays a much larger and more sympathetic roll later on is more of a foil here.
Although I figured out most of the who-done-it well before Goldy does, I still enjoyed listening to the book. It was interesting to see the characters so far removed from where they were in the first book I'd read.
To be serious I'm going to give this series a chance. All I've been able to do this time around was to ease myself into the unfamiliar writing that any cozy series bring to the table. This book has a higher vocab than usual cozies. It's also varied, there are attempts at humor, some of which stick to the wall, some off the wall. The sole plus I've scraped from this...experience, is that there are no characters I despise. This book is about 300 pages but it felt like more. That's why I said about easing myself into the sequels. The style doesn't help, and time drags on instead of flying past while reading Catering to Nobody. Maybe I need to crowbar myself in instead.
The audible version is
Goldy is a whiny, self-
I found it odd that the recipes are in the middle of sentences! Not at the end of chapters or even paragraphs - but in the middle of sentences. Oh. My. God. Also, who on earth puts mayonnaise in guacamole? You have to wonder how far she'll go as a caterer with this recipe.
Her ex-husband is a well-heeled doctor but she doesn't make him pay child support on a regular basis even though she's struggling as a caterer to make ends meet. She'd rather keep the peace than pay the bills! She's never taken him to court about paying support on a regular basis, gotten a restraining order against him for physically assaulting her, nor told him never to speak to her that way again. Her name should be on doormats sold countrywide. But it's contradictory when she just tells people what to do, like taking her ex-mother-in-law's car and refusing to give it back.
She's not even conscientious as a caterer. She runs out of supplies. I'm a home cook and I check my cupboards and refrigerator on a regular basis, and if I'm running low I replenish, and if I use a can of anything I replace it the next time I go to the store!
She allows her son to call his grandparents by their first names because apparently neither she nor her husband could teach him otherwise. It might not bother others, but I find it disrespectful, the same as if they wouldn't call a teacher by their first name. Her son also speaks and acts like he's twenty, not eleven. It makes you wonder if the author has children of her own.
She's only investigating because her business is on the line, she doesn't really care otherwise, and she has no problem breaking into Laura's home and taking things, including smoking the dead woman's cigarettes; nor going through confidential patient files.
She's a horrible human being and unlikable in the extreme. It makes you wonder how there are so many books in this series. No, I will not read any more of them and I'm sorry I even read the first one.