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クッキング・ママの遺言書
新規レビューを書く⇒みなさんの感想をお待ちしております！！
クッキング・ママの遺言書の評価:
| 書評･レビュー点数毎のグラフです | 平均点4.46pt | ||||||||
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Amazonサイトに投稿されている書評･レビュー一覧です
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全146件 141～146 8/8ページ
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| I'm glad to see Goldie in rare form and look forward to more adventures and great recipes. This was a great summer read. Keep them coming. | ||||
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| Diane Mott Davison's 12 or 13 books are all about Goldy, the caterer, who solves mysteries/murders as she continues catering. There is a lot of description of how she prepares the food and many recipes are included. While the stories are somewhat "formulaic", they are a fun, fast read with great character and food descriptions. I can't wait for her next one to come out! | ||||
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| Goldy's catering meals for a law firm and falls over her dead friend. Amazing how she knows so many people who are murdered. Her husband is a dream come true. I enjoy Davidson's books and recipes. | ||||
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| Diane Mott Davidson just gets better and better!!! I always look forward to her Goldy Bear mysteries. This actually is a gift for someone else, so I read it with clean hands so I wouldn't mark up the book! | ||||
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| I love this series of Characters and book. Great writer and material. | ||||
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| A riveting intensity in the opening scene of DARK TORT (the legal term for wrongful act, not "torte" as in pastry) was sparked by the first sentence of chapter one, page one. But what welded the rivets for me was the culinary catastrophe in the third paragraph: "The bag of flour I was carrying slid from my hands and exploded on the carpet. Two jars of yeast plummeted onto the coffee table, where they burst into shards and powder. My last bottle of molasses sailed in a wide arc and cracked onto the receptionist's cherry-wood desk. A thick wave of sweet, dark liquid began a gluey descent across the phone console. My steel bowl of bread sponge catapulted out or my arms and hit the wall." With each sensory impression in that paragraph having opened gateways into my mind, I would be reading onward with awakened interest. I approach each new offering from Diane Mott Davidson with an anticipation expanded from each previous issue in her Goldilocks catering collection. Mesmerized by the luscious book jacket on DARK TORT, I picked up the hardback with my right hand, and ran my left fingertips over the face of the cool, smooth, brail effective jacket. I was more than ready to pick up on what this author had done subtly differently this time to continue infusing her stories with the edge and surge which had kept them riding tips of waves of cravings for culinary mysteries. Davidson wasn't the first, of course, to use the sensuality of food flavors, cooking processes, and recipe insertions to invite readers more cozily into a series of mysteries. See my "chickens or eggs" Listmania about this sub genre, including those early Series of Yum featuring Nero Wolfe, Spenser, Eugenia Potter, and Archy McNally. Davidson's coup, however, rather than pioneering the pack, was to instinctively expand a few of the cores of appeal, as exposed in the paragraph quoted above, and touched upon in my Listmania of DMD's Goldy series. The first 40 pages had the feel of a nightmare; I had half expected Goldy to suddenly point to her pillow, at a place to ponder about the dream, which would, of course, be a clue to a murder which would occur later, in the waking state. Ironically, those first 40 pages also had the feel of the reality of "tripping over a dead body" (of a close friend) and dealing with that type of emotional/mental/spiritual trauma, compiled with the ongoing chill of threatening police procedural impositions impregnated with that metallic taste/smell, which Goldy made note of a few times during those opening pages, usually in reference to heat systems blowing warm air with that blood chilling flavor. And, yes, most mystery fans would catch the connection, though the dots hadn't been directly filled in about blood having a metallic, coppery essence. Goldy had been catapulted into a broken down, intensely vulnerable state from tripping over Dusty's body. Yet, Goldy dealt with that focus-shattering situation with a hard-won (throughout the series) inner-strength belying victimization. Not only was the first quarter of the plot a reader rivet, it effectively exposed the inner workings of the detective novel's classic scene of "finding a dead body," and took this series another step beyond amateur-sleuth ambiance (which feels more like a game of Clue than a discovery of death by malice). Please don't take me wrong in that comparison. For reading entertainment, I generally prefer cozy mysteries to the cold realism of crime novels. But, Davidson appears to be using this series as a vehicle for deepening a profile for dealing effectively with the realistic drama of psychological trauma, and she's doing it with grit and grace. The interview which Britt (the police officer) conducted with Goldy was lengthy and realistic (and interesting, as the reader was being clued in to mostly new stuff, or at least to a different angle of Goldy's observations). Everything related to "murder up" was expanded, according to emotional ebbs and flows "of the real world," carried through to the taking of food to the family of the victim. Political/cultural statements were woven through TORT with the elevation of a life-abused, neighborhood "welfare family" trying to get ahead, with some but not quite enough help (according to Goldy) from church, neighbors, police, and the legal profession. So, of course, when the victim's Mom begs, using the big guns of heavy guilt, Goldy agrees to take the law into her own hands (again) and ferret out the cultural and human culprit(s) to blame for the welfare family's plight (and for the murder). Davidson has mentioned periodically in interviews that she wants to expose how the community breaks down to allow and/or nurture various types of crime; and that she wants to expose that people in the community will reveal more to the amateur sleuth than to a police professional. How Columbo, Spenser, and/or Perry Mason would ever get anywhere in an amateur sleuth mystery becomes one of those "under the rug" questions. But, those guys pick bones their ways in their worlds, while Goldy cooks up storms of clues in her spaciously gourmet, commercial kitchen, simultaneous to sorting through the ones which come `round to bat her body and soul while she's in an eternal state of grieving exhaustion (to which, as faithful readers, we've become happily addicted). So, how does she ever GET anywhere? That spring-loaded titanium back bone. And Tom's hugs accompanied by his "to die for" sharing of the career-laden-Mom-homemaker's loads of eternal daily duties. Then there's ESPRESSO, the Energizer Bunny bean! (Couldn't love more the way Goldy snarls at anyone who has the wherewithal or gall to trash the natural, real values of caffeine, butter, eggs, and/or creme.) In TORT, Davidson has set up an intriguing case study comparison between Arch and Gus, the Two Faces of Janus, as Goldy terms them, with both boys being J.R.K's sons born near the same time to very different situations and Mom's. The result is almost like having a bipolar personality split between siblings, and the contrast is interesting. As Goldy stumbles and bumbles with heart and soul, THE WORLD TURNS. Yet, amazingly, this series feels in no way like a Soap Opera. (I don't mean to downplay the due draw of that classic and literal art form, either; I can do soaps, aroma-bubbles intended.) A customer reviewer described the style/mood in TORT: "Overall Dark Tort followed in the steps of previous Davidson novels, familiar just like comfort food; but not overwhelming." For me, that was a perceptive description, especially use of the phrase, "not overwhelming." The necessary intensity of crime novels can become overwhelming at times, though, again, I don't mean to criticize that novel angle, either. For a while I was afraid I'd be overwhelmed by yet another TORT following the deeply formed footsteps of The Pelican Brief ilk, making gas, oil, and Capitalism the rotten, rampaging root of all evil. When, oh when are the real scientists going to be allowed in media massaged counts of what's actually going on (or not) in the ozone. Maybe when we have a long enough time base (eons and ages) from which to accurately calculate true causes of currently cruising catastrophes? Thank you Davidson, for not going there. Linda G. Shelnutt | ||||
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新規レビューを書く⇒みなさんの感想をお待ちしております！！