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Retired history teacher Phyllis Newsom runs a boarding house; her boarders are all retired teachers, and now friends. Phyllis and Carolyn Wilbarger have a long-standing friendly rivalry over baking skills; Carolyn is ahead at this point. Eve Turner is the Blanche Devereaux in this Golden Girls set-up; the role of Sophia Petrillo has been discarded in favor of having a man around the house, Sam Fletcher. Carolyn has the warms for Sam, and thinks he may be interested in her, but Eve is definitely gunning for Sam. Somehow Carolyn and Phyllis get dragooned into helping with the Oliver Loving Elementary School annual carnival. They are going to run the Bake Sale. It‛s going to be a little different this year. There will be a contest and auction for the most original and/or creative cake, and a contest for the best tasting healthy snack. There will be a small cookbook with all the healthy recipes in it, sold for a nominal sum to help with the fund-raising. At first, Phyllis and Carolyn agree to split the contest: Phyllis will enter a cake and Carolyn a snack. Shannon Dunston sticks her oar in and once again, the two friends are facing off. Shannon is very good at sticking her oar in; she‛s the current president of the Parent-Teacher Organization and tends to forget she is dealing with volunteers. She is not the most charming woman one is ever likely to meet. So it‛s no surprise that she winds up dead. Is her murder related to the burglary at the school a few weeks before? Or to the missing money from the carnival? There are lots of suspects but the timing or the motive just don‛t work for most of them. Phyllis has one son, Michael, who is a deputy with the local sheriff‛s department. This makes for a helpful and reliable source of information when she gets involved. She‛s already solved one mystery and finds herself asking lots of questions about this one. The sheriff is, understandably, not enthusiastic about this turn of events. Sam isn‛t so sure it‛s a good idea either, but he‛s willing to help out when asked. MURDER BY THE SLICE is a nice cozy mystery. The relationships, and the characters, are all believable. Plot isn‛t Washburn‛s strong suit, but that‛s OK. Readers will probably know someone like each of the major characters and will recognize the universal nature of the problems each of them encounters. The bit in the middle about baking a cake is a little long, but easily skipped by anyone who has ever baked. The recipes at the end all look tasty; I‛ve seen pictures of the cake Phyllis makes (on the cover of a national women's magazine) and it‛s stunning. MURDER BY THE SLICE is a worthy successor to the debut of the series, A PEACH OF A MURDER.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, August 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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