Customer Reviews

The Baked Bean Supper Murders

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Before you finish this splendedly composed mystery, Mrs. "Genia" Potter will seem like a member of your family. I loved all Virginia Rich's original books. She gave such life to her characters. What luck for us readers that Nancy Pickard kindly picked up the series and Mrs. Potter can continue to solve her little mysteries. Thank you ladies for the good stories and yummie recipes. I look forward to more.

The book is worth any price just for the blueberry pie recipe.

This is one of three mysteries written by Virginia Rich. Her way with words, thoughts and story construction are wonderful! I miss her writing skills!!!!!!!!!

THE BAKED BEAN SUPPER MURDERS by Virginia Rich is more complex than her previous mystery, but no less fascinating. Mrs. Rich explores issues of the human heart and coming of age in this anything, but light mystery.
Eugenia "Genia" Potter visits her home in Maine on the shore of the Atlantic and with deft strokes creates the "Yankee character" to stark vividness. The murder of an old man and Mrs. Potter's dog is cruel, but those events will keep you reading to the last page without a stop to try any of the wonderful foods that use lobster or blueberries.
I've flagged them in the my copy to try this winter when my garden isn't sprouting weeds overnight.
Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS.

Don't expect sex and gore, just a great story. The author just keeps you interested and the endings are what reading is all about. You just don't know who did the deed!

The book was the quality described and arrived sooner than expected. Very happy with this purchase.

Unexpectedly, this novel was richer and smoother than the other 5, in narrative style and in the dichotomies of small-town, trivial-tensions etched through the welcoming warmth of familiarity and intimacy. In the pilot to the series, THE COOKING SCHOOL MURDERS, it seemed that Rich was writing with all cylinders primed and pumping. At retirement age at the time, possibly she had harbored a long banked dream of writing this type of novel, and she was giving it all she had saved in her writer's soul through a rich lifetime. See my review (link page).

In BAKED BEAN SUPPER MURDERS, the second book in the series, the author's style seemed more relaxed. She seemed to have settled her author's hat comfortably on her head, and to feel she would be allowed by her publisher and readers to take time setting the foundation of an extensive collection of characters, which were her neighbors and friends with a few newcomers to the community mixed into the brew, most of whom would become suspects. Rich wasn't just developing depth into an intriguing group of characters to carry a "still waters run deep" plot. She was developing various types of Character from ethical, philosophical, sociological, and psychological perspectives. And she was "doing" an edgy Norman Rockwell portrait of small town life, this time with a slightly bitter twist (booze slurped tastefully, and socially tended), which eloquently exposed the dynamics of greed and offensiveness which can fester within a small community, especially when wide spreads of class structures, and a variety of social attitudes attempt to mix (or not) within a small, seasonally lush geography.

Below is a paragraph from my review of COOKING SCHOOL MURDERS, in which I noted the warmth Rich dramatized about another small town area, that of her own point of origin in Iowa:

You might expect a more simply sophisticated version of Mrs. Pollifax, a version of that feisty, restless, elderly spy; a version which is contented to settle into her last chapters of life by leisurely honing the luxury of cooking, of nurturing the body and soul by being comfortably in and seeing the significance of The Basic Life within small-town-communities existing in various places on "The Route 66 Literary Continuum" from Sinclair Lewis's MAIN STREET to Grace Metalious's PEYTON PLACE, with Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen cookie jar series taking the cake for the sweetest, perkiest view of small town life (warm hearts in cold places; see my Listmania).

THIS time many of Eugenia's friends and neighbors, with those among them who were neither, treated her like an old-lady-widow who should be done with the vital part of her life. Poor souls. They should have been warned. In one scene Mrs. Potter was rendered speechless several times, by this group, and each time I smiled, knowing this cattle rancher (her other home was in Arizona), horse riding lady would eventually get her feet under her (or in the stirrups), and the cow pies would fly. Loved that scene. Loved how Rich had Potter work herself out of the offensive affronts.

Since this # 2 in this sequence was my last novel in this series to read, I applied ginger to my reading recipe. I've reviewed the other two novels, by Virginia Rich, and those by Nancy Pickard who successfully published three Mrs. Potter novels after Rich's death. Possibly I had left this one to read last because I hadn't felt the pizzazz for THE BAKED BEAN SUPPER MURDERS title, as I had the others. I wondered if that might have been because baked beans, though I love them, didn't hit my palate as anything special in the currently jazzed-up culinary world. When Rich composed this one (probably during the transition from the 1970's to the 80's), especially from her secondary home setting in a lobster fishing village near Bangor Maine, brown bread and baked bean recipes were treasured and held close by the old guard cooks in the community.

While you're drooling over the opening supper entrees and ingredients, allow yourself to read leisurely through the character setting space in the early plot. I doubt any reader could have more trouble than I do with remembering a slew of names. I was helped by knowing that Rich doesn't just drip them and let the water run out without containment, she continues (underwater basket?) weaving names, faces, bodies, and social styles, through each other and throughout the mystery, completing several tangy tapestries which will thoroughly incorporate not only each name mentioned, but will add the reader into the design, from his complimentary side.

"Here's looking at you, kid."

This was an unusual mystery, in warm, spicy, and feisty ways. In this one I felt the characters' grief for the loss of each murdered character. I felt a deep disgust for some of the potential perpetrators.

Long live the soul of a true novelist who happened to have a plethora of mystery spices with which to season ... A Great American Novel.

Richness was achieved here, and shared well.

Thank you, Virginia. You've risen perfectly to your current residence and its unlimited views of many oceans. No old lady, you. Lady of the first water.

Holding a crystal water-goblet in both hands, looking through prisms of multi-colored light, I see not a cozy culinary. I see a true author, Virginia Rich, and a true novel with a tangy, tasteful mystery included.

Linda Shelnutt

Unexpectedly, this novel was richer and smoother than the other 5, in narrative style and in the dichotomies of small-town, trivial-tensions etched through the welcoming warmth of familiarity and intimacy. In the pilot to the series, THE COOKING SCHOOL MURDERS, it seemed that Rich was writing with all cylinders primed and pumping. At retirement age at the time, possibly she had harbored a long banked dream of writing this type of novel, and she was giving it all she had saved in her writer's soul through a rich lifetime. See my review (link page).

In BAKED BEAN SUPPER MURDERS, the second book in the series, the author's style seemed more relaxed. She seemed to have settled her author's hat comfortably on her head, and to feel she would be allowed by her publisher and readers to take time setting the foundation of an extensive collection of characters, which were her neighbors and friends with a few newcomers to the community mixed into the brew, most of whom would become suspects. Rich wasn't just developing depth into an intriguing group of characters to carry a "still waters run deep" plot. She was developing various types of Character from ethical, philosophical, sociological, and psychological perspectives. And she was "doing" an edgy Norman Rockwell portrait of small town life, this time with a slightly bitter twist (booze slurped tastefully, and socially tended), which eloquently exposed the dynamics of greed and offensiveness which can fester within a small community, especially when wide spreads of class structures, and a variety of social attitudes attempt to mix (or not) within a small, seasonally lush geography.

Below is a paragraph from my review of COOKING SCHOOL MURDERS, in which I noted the warmth Rich dramatized about another small town area, that of her own point of origin in Iowa:

You might expect a more simply sophisticated version of Mrs. Pollifax, a version of that feisty, restless, elderly spy; a version which is contented to settle into her last chapters of life by leisurely honing the luxury of cooking, of nurturing the body and soul by being comfortably in and seeing the significance of The Basic Life within small-town-communities existing in various places on "The Route 66 Literary Continuum" from Sinclair Lewis's MAIN STREET to Grace Metalious's PEYTON PLACE, with Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen cookie jar series taking the cake for the sweetest, perkiest view of small town life (warm hearts in cold places; see my Listmania).

THIS time many of Eugenia's friends and neighbors, with those among them who were neither, treated her like an old-lady-widow who should be done with the vital part of her life. Poor souls. They should have been warned. In one scene Mrs. Potter was rendered speechless several times, by this group, and each time I smiled, knowing this cattle rancher (her other home was in Arizona), horse riding lady would eventually get her feet under her (or in the stirrups), and the cow pies would fly. Loved that scene. Loved how Rich had Potter work herself out of the offensive affronts.

Since this # 2 in this sequence was my last novel in this series to read, I applied ginger to my reading recipe. I've reviewed the other two novels, by Virginia Rich, and those by Nancy Pickard who successfully published three Mrs. Potter novels after Rich's death. Possibly I had left this one to read last because I hadn't felt the pizzazz for THE BAKED BEAN SUPPER MURDERS title, as I had the others. I wondered if that might have been because baked beans, though I love them, didn't hit my palate as anything special in the currently jazzed-up culinary world. When Rich composed this one (probably during the transition from the 1970's to the 80's), especially from her secondary home setting in a lobster fishing village near Bangor Maine, brown bread and baked bean recipes were treasured and held close by the old guard cooks in the community.

While you're drooling over the opening supper entrees and ingredients, allow yourself to read leisurely through the character setting space in the early plot. I doubt any reader could have more trouble than I do with remembering a slew of names. I was helped by knowing that Rich doesn't just drip them and let the water run out without containment, she continues (underwater basket?) weaving names, faces, bodies, and social styles, through each other and throughout the mystery, completing several tangy tapestries which will thoroughly incorporate not only each name mentioned, but will add the reader into the design, from his complimentary side.

"Here's looking at you, kid."

This was an unusual mystery, in warm, spicy, and feisty ways. In this one I felt the characters' grief for the loss of each murdered character. I felt a deep disgust for some of the potential perpetrators.

Long live the soul of a true novelist who happened to have a plethora of mystery spices with which to season ... A Great American Novel.

Richness was achieved here, and shared well.

Thank you, Virginia. You've risen perfectly to your current residence and its unlimited views of many oceans. No old lady, you. Lady of the first water.

Holding a crystal water-goblet in both hands, looking through prisms of multi-colored light, I see not a cozy culinary. I see a true author, Virginia Rich, and a true novel with a tangy, tasteful mystery included.

Linda Shelnutt