|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
FIT TO DIE, the second in the Supper Club mysteries, sees two businesses coming to quiet Quincy Gap. The first is an all-in-one fitness center, where you buy diet food, exercise, and go to weight loss meetings. The second is an ice cream parlor two doors down. The Supper Club members decide to join Witness to Fitness, although James Henry would be more interested in helping out at Chilly Willy’s. Particularly since the personable ice cream man is managing to make enemies right and left. Perky Veronica keeps running up the block to tell his customers that they’re ruining their bodies and they should come to her center instead. The local historical society is horrified that he chose to use a pagoda design for his building. And the church ladies have declared that they’ll drive him out of town for selling T-shirts that say: “Have you got a chilly willy?” So it’s really no surprise that arson claims Chilly Willy’s Polar Pagoda a few days later. That the crispy body of the local drunk was found in the back is regrettable. That he turned out have burned to death in a drugged sleep is murder. The plot and pacing make for a moderately interesting puzzle, but the book’s tone and attitudes put me right off. Stanley tries so hard to connect with the feelings of a bunch of people who are overweight and familiar with the diet scene, and manages only to serve up clichés. It reads like a thin person’s primer on what it’s supposed to be like to be overweight – emotionally stunted, obsessive, making up in self-hate what lacks in self-esteem or self-control. James becomes grubbing and fanatical when he sees éclairs being offered for tasting. A woman bursts into tears and admits to the stranger who is berating her for noshing on candy that she eats to make herself feel better. And Veronica seems to think that “You’re too beautiful to ruin yourself with food like this,” and “I love you too much to see you do this to yourself” are emotionally stirring motivational speeches instead of an invitation for a slap upside the head. (Keyboard cannot express my disappointment that Veronica wasn’t the murder victim. Or that the woman eating candy in the checkout line didn't frigidly tell Veronica that she was a hypoglycemic on the verge of a blood sugar crash.) Weight aside, James makes for an unattractive hero; he can never seem to muster up much action or drive. Much of his internal monologue is about how his father is making his life miserable and how he manages to keep screwing up his passively understated romance. Somehow none of this is his fault and he can't understand why it happens. Even his role reporting on Witness to Fitness is thrust upon him (and Stanley fumbles that plot thread entirely, never pointing to anyone’s reactions to James’ various interviews.) All in all, FIT TO DIE is a very thin mystery about stereotyped fat people.
Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, August 2007
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
