My favorite Goldy mystery that I've listened to so far. Great plot and really kept me guessing. I love the core characters of these mysteries. ( )

Caterer Goldy Schulz is having a bad day. Someone has sabotaged a memorial service she is catering & knocked her out in the process. She then gets into a verbal altercation with her psychopathic ex-husband in the parking lot. Later, she discovers this same ex-husband shot dead in his garage—and she is the prime suspect. There is no shortage of alternate suspects, however; he left a trail of disgruntled ex-wives & girlfriends a mile long, not to mention he was involved in some shady dealings and had no visible means of support—despite his lavish lifestyle. Even though her new husband Tom is a policeman & assures her the police are more than capable of handling the case, Goldy takes it upon herself to clear her own name & clumsily pursues her own investigation.

I have read a couple of other entries in this series in the distant past, and this one seems to be precisely on par with the others. The most noticeable thing about it is that it is often more like reading a cheesy soap opera script than a cozy mystery; there is a lot of over-the-top drama, a lot of gossip, a lot of backstabbing, a lot of mentally unbalanced characters, and even a couple of tepid (completely gratuitous) sex scenes. The only thing missing is Goldy’s evil twin.

The writing is tolerable, but not very good. For instance, I am pretty sure when Davidson mentions the health inspector being like Holmes’ Moriarty serving as “the impersonation of evil” she was trying to say he is the personification of evil. Sadly, nowadays, it is just not possible to expect professional writers to be too adept at language skills. It should not surprise me anymore, but it still makes me want to weep.

Several of the recurring characters can only be described as tiresome.

Goldy’s son Arch is spoiled, sullen, self-absorbed, & a colossal sass-mouth. I gather he is supposed to be a stereotypical teenage boy, but Davidson takes the stereotype way too far to be bearable. It is very easy to envision his character as a frat party rapist a couple of books down the road. If dear little Arch had found himself as collateral damage in a previous story, I doubt too many people would be grieving his absence.

Marla Korman, Goldy’s best friend & fellow ex-wife of the now dead psychopath, is very disturbing. Here is a woman with a seemingly endless supply of money, energy, & time; yet she wastes an inordinate amount of this money, energy, & time stalking, investigating, & otherwise obsessing over her odious ex-husband whom she repeatedly professes to despise. And she even chooses to keep this jerk’s last name, which is just odd. Maybe all of this is explained in one of the books I have not read, but I doubt any explanation could make her behavior seem any less deranged.

Goldy herself is an inherently troubling character. Her actions & decisions repeatedly reinforce the notion that she actually enjoys being a victim. Her past refusals to press charges against her abusive husband, as well as her continued willingness to allow him to control her life (even though she clearly has the ammunition & resources to curtail it) render her more of an unpleasant character than a sympathetic one. At the end of this book, Goldy even expresses an almost optimistic expectation that Roger Mannis—the vile health inspector—will fill the abusive role in her life left vacant by her now deceased ex-husband. It’s all a little too Freudian for my tastes.

On a side note, this series does include recipes. They are all contained at the back of the book, so they don’t intrude into the flow of the story at all. They also represent a lot of what Goldy cooks up during the course of the story. I actually tried a couple and they weren’t bad. So, if you are passionate about mysteries that include recipes, this isn’t the worst choice you could make.

My final verdict: This series is good enough for me to be willing to read it when a friend gives me a copy or when I run across a new title at the library. It’s not good enough for me to spend any money buying it. ( )

This is one ladylike book. Some sense of humor helped it. Two and a half out of five. ( )

This is another delightful installment in the Goldy Schultz catering mysteries. This time, the murder that Goldy stumbles onto is that of her ex-husband, the Jerk. Trying to balance her relief that he's dead with her worry about being the prime suspect while supporting her son, Arch, through losing his father keeps Goldy busy. And, of course, she's still catering and providing some scrumptious recipes. ( )

I've read several in the series but I'm not always sure I've read them in order. In fact, I thought they'd changed the series name to Goldy Schultz or just Goldy.

Double shot apparently refers to Goldy's consumption of coffee--despite the fact that she's trying to "cut down", it seems every time we turned around, she had a double shot of espresso that she was drinking.

This book was a little too soap-opera-ish for my taste. I can't quite figure out how John Richard Korman manages to have had relationships with over 50 women given how boorish his character is in the scenes we see him in in these books. Why would any woman want to go out with that?

You've got a teenager who gets pregnant and gets sent away, a different teenager who's raped, a nurse who doesn't say anything because she figures she'll get fired if she accuses a doctor,and a whole host of other characters who almost seem to be caricatures.

The premise seems to be wearing a bit thin. Goldy seems to feel that she, and only she (with a little help from Tom), is the only one who can solve a mystery. Why even bother to have a police department then? Why not just get Goldy to give up catering and take over solving all the mysteries and crimes that occur in Aspen Meadows? I mean, why would you want to hire a caterer who has dead bodies turn up at some of her events and in other cases, around her? I think I'd find a different caterer--even if I had to pay extra to get someone in from the "big city". ( )