I do enjoy these - and I am always thankful for my gift of forgetting which allows me to reread periodically. Otherwise I would be very sad, because there are only two left - and she seems to be going one every two years instead of one per year.
I actually pulled a quotation from this one to include in a pathetically pedantic piece for an ed class that I was taking. Goldy is rousting Arch for something or other and he is bemoaning the few days remaining of summer vacation. She informs him that it isn't like he is being hustled off to prison or something and Arch retorts,"You haven't been around an American high school lately, have you, Mom?" Ouch. And sadly, much truer than we like to think.
This one is all about catering weddings - bridezillas and all the rest. My absolute favorite scene is the one in which the drunken father of the bride/ex-husband of the mother of the bride shows up and the priest punches him out, landing him seat first in the elaborate wedding cake carefully constructed by Julian. What more could you want?
Perhaps, on another note, one should observe that the juxtaposition of slapstick comedy with high tragedy is a device that has been in use for centuries. I always think of Puccini's La Boheme (opera workshop my sophomore year). There is a rousing mock sword fight (with paint brushes) going on in the garret when the dying Mimi is dumped on their doorstep. Okay, enough culture.
Seriously, few do fluffy or cozy or whatever you want to call them murder mysteries better than Davidson. Lots of cooking, some knitting - was Miss Marple cozy? I think not, in spite of the knitting. I keep trying to define the sub-genre to my satisfaction, but I haven't got it yet.
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