Customer Reviews

The Crepes of Wrath (Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

In Hernia, Pennsylvania, lives large Amish and Mennonite populations with tourists from around the world converging on the small area. Most visitors stay at the Penn-Dutch Inn run by Magdalena Yoder, a keen businessperson who has managed to turn a failing farm into a profit making enterprise. Magdalena has also an uncanny ability to solve homicide cases.

Her brother-in-law, the local police chief, asks Magdalena to help him solve the murder of Lizzie Mast, a devout Mennonite married to a Viet Nam veteran. Lizzie died from an overdose of Angel Dust. Apparently, just before she died, Lizzie received a threatening note that the postmaster saw. However, a hit and run driver deliberately kills the postmaster. Magdalena learns that some local teens are experimenting with illegal drugs and concludes that their supplier provided the Angel Dust to Lizzie. Magdalena must identify the seller in order to stop more deaths form occurring.

Every book that Tamar Myers writes in her wonderful "Pennsylvania Dutch with recipes" series contains much humor and insight. However, the current tale, THE CREPES OF WRATH, is just plain funny while providing even more understanding of the communities than the strong previous entries. The witty repartees and double entendres allow readers to feel good even while murder and drugs serve as the focus of the mystery. The characters are likable while the mystery is well drawn and executed. On a scale from one to five, this regional amateur sleuth novel is a ten.

Harriet Klausner

I keep one or two Tamar Myers' books on hand for any day I'm feeling out of sorts, down, depressed, or PMSing. I always end sorted, up, laughing, and... well, there's no cure for the PMSing part, but she does make me forget about it for a while! Today was the day for Crepes! and Tamar took me on a great cozy ride through the Penn Dutch Inn. Her sister was wrapped in Gauze, her brother-in-law was was his usual Praying Mantis self -- is he really running for public office? Clinton was bad enough -- and I must say that I fell in love with the cat.... I hooted all the way through! The only thing I hated about the book? It was too special to take to the tub and read while I soaked... The things I give up for Miss Myers'characters!

Magdalena Yoder, owner of the PennDutch Inn is back again in the ninth book of the Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery series. This time Hernia's worst cook, Lizzie Mast, is poisoned by some crepes. Magdalena's guests are always under suspicion and this time they include an African-American couple, a TV star and his wife, and a very tall PE teacher who is recruiting for her high school basketball team. Magdalena decides that she might as well solve the murder because her brother-in-law Melvin, who is Chief of Police, seems incapable of solving anything. This book contains the usual puns and jokes and will appeal to most of Myers' fans.

Tamar Myers just keeps getting better and better. She is the funniest mystery writer I've read. I particularly enjoy her use of language (alliteration, puns, etc.). And her characters are delightfully individual, just like real people. In this book, Ms. Myers again manages to make light of her characters without making light of the serious problems (such as drugs and murder) they are involved in. I can't wait for the next book in the series!

Tamar Myers, The Crepes of Wrath (New American Library, 2001)

I hate to say it, but I've binged a little too much on Tamar Myers over the last eight months. Like consuming too many ice cream sundaes all at once, the feeling you get after finishing your last one is more uncomfortable nausea than pleasure. When you've read four or five PennDutch mysteries in a concentrated amount of time, all the wailing will eventually get to you.

To be fair, Magdalena does do a lot less wailing in this book, but replaces it with various other W-words. One wonders, idly, which letter of the alphabet Myers will be abusing next in Magdalena's quest to solve the various crimes too complex for her stupid brother-in-law, Chief of Police Melvin Stoltzfus, to get his head around. In this case, a teetotaling Amish woman has keeled over from an overdose of angel dust; too busy with his campaign to bother, Melvin asks Magdalena to take the case. Not that she doesn't have an innful of weirdos to deal with, as usual, and her tentative relatinship with a guy who's not only from out of town, but Jewish to boot. You can almost hear her mother rolling over in her grave. (Magdalena does, more than once, in the course of this novel).

Tamar Myers is getting more scurrilous as time goes on (there's rather a large number of double-entendres involving Magdalena's pet kitten Little Freni; methinks Myers has developed a perfectly reasonable fondness for the British sitcom Are You Being Served? In recent years), which is always a good thing, and the book's as readable as ever. Actually, I liked it better than the earlier PennDutch mysteries I've read; Myers is getting more of a sense of how to plot as time goes on, leading to less explanation-of-the-mystery at the end (here, there's only about half a page of "aha! This is how I knew you were the killer!"). But be warned, dear reader, an excess of empty calories can lead to a tender stomach. Take Magdalena in small doses. ***

Tamar Myers Pennsylvania Dutch Amish mysteries is are just 'plain' fun. This most recent installment keeps the fun and interest rolling along. Newcomers to this series might like to know that the recipes included in each book are good recipies. Want a rollicking good time?....read this book!

I read my first Tamar Myers' book several years ago and bought the rest of her books the next weekend. Within two weeks, I had devoured all her books and developed a taste for female mystery writers. Her last few books in both her series have been disappointing, and this one was no exception. I finished the book in two nights but felt hollow - stuffy not fluffy. (I love the crepes recipes, though).

Now that Susannah is married, Magdalena is not quite so pithy as before; Gabe is not as interesting as "Pookie Bear" (whom I still miss); and Freni is not as colorful. I really feel that Magdalena carrying "Little Freni" in her bra is a mistake. When Susannah did it with her rat/dog, it was quirky and fun; when Magdalena does it (after complaining about Susannah's habit), it seems contrived.

Don't get me wrong. I would still recommend the book as highly entertaining, but if you don't like this one, try one of her other books first.

Sometimes we forget that a book of fiction is primarily to entertain the reader, to cause the reader to forget for a while his or her "otherwise drab and wretched life." I borrow that phrase without shame from Tom Lehrer.

This book is certainly an entertainment. The plot isn't all that much, I'll admit. Otherwise, I'd have given it five stars. However, I am just enthralled with Magdalena Portulacca Yoder, the skinny, middle-aged Mennonite innkeeper who runs around Hernia, Pennsylvania, with a small kitty asleep in her bra. If you haven't read the book, you won't believe that or understand it at all. Trust me, she does. And when that kitty is awakened suddenly, well....

The Amish and Mennonite neighbors (along with the "English" inn guests and neighbors) are also memorable--quirky but surely alive. The town itself and the country inn provide a fine atmosphere, one I would like to visit. My only reservation is the thinnish plot and a rather vague resolution, but at least we didn't get a confession and then a suicide.

I will definitely read more books by Tamar Myers. Thank you. You made me laugh outloud, and I haven't done that with a novel since "The Confederacy of Dunces."

Tamar Myers really knows how to include some of the "Dutch" culture in a good plot. She has fun weaving an interesting plot and at times creates bizarre habits for the charcters in her story. She also gives the reader an understanding of some of the customs of the Pennsylvania Dutch people. I have enjoyed all of this series and the recipes too. I look forward to the next book in this series.

I read this book out of curiosity and found it a little too crude for my taste. Both Kinsey Millhone and Spenser have probable cause for making glib, and sometimes crude, wisecracks. Magdalena Yoder doesn't. If anything, she may be in need of a good psychologist. And cats no doubt make fine pets but there has got to be something wrong with the way this broad carrys her's around. I probably won't be reading the rest of the books in this series any time soon.