Another gimmick series. Cute, in an irritating way. Designed to appeal to the same sort of audience as her Ghost of Granny Apple books. The gimmick in these is that the accidental detective is fat. Been done - remember Nero Wolfe? He was so fat that he had to have Archie Goodwin to do all the running about for him while he tended his orchids and discussed menus with his chef, whose name I have forgotten at the moment - Fritz something? This woman merely scarfs junk food. Jaffarian apparently intends to redeem the open bias of ridiculing fat people by making her fat heroine's best friend (also fat) a black woman. Sorry, didn't work.
The fat girl thing is justified, perhaps, because the victim is the founder of their "fat and proud of it" group. Nothing wrong with being accepting of oneself, I'm no lightweight myself. Still, the story did not really depend on the fact that they were all proud of being overweight. It could have been any other sort of self-defined group just as well. I guess I resent it on my own behalf!
I rather doubt if I will read any more of them - I can find unadulterated fluff in other settings. Still, for those occasions calling for the reading of unadulterated fluff, it will serve. I didn't have any trouble finishing the book - the story itself was clever and entertaining.
And this may have given me another means of categorizing cozy mysteries. I am going to have to give the idea of the gimmick some thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment