Customer Reviews

Double Shot CD (Goldy Bear Culinary Mysteries)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Finally Goldy is free of the abuse from the Jerk, whose murder opens the Pandora's box of all that he was capable of, and, it's worse than you will ever expect. So Excellent Riddance. On the other hand, it looks like there will be new family and friendship relationships developing in and around the Schulz family and.. who knows what tomorrow might bring. I only hope that Marla's character does not fade from view now that the main reason of her gossipy life has gone.
Very promising and lovely, easy scrumptious recipes at the end don't interrupt the continuity of the story. Diane come back soon!

No other culinary mystery author compares to Mott Davidson. I especially share her passion for espresso in every form, and was NOT disappointed.

If you are like me, the main drawback of this wonderful series about Goldy Schultz has been the repeated violence that she has suffered at the hands of her ex-husband, Dr. John Richard Korman. Well, unless he comes back as a ghost, that problem is at an end because JRK (also known as the Jerk by his ex-wives and ex-girl friends -- some 50+ in number) is killed in this outing of the delightful culinary series. That's the good news.

The bad news is that Goldy is physically assaulted and injured in the book's opening in a way that suggests that this annoying part of the series (Goldy as punching bag) will continue in future books. I hope not. I realize that many women are physically abused by friends, lovers and spouses . . . but making that a major theme of a culinary mystery just doesn't make sense to me. I graded the book down one star for this continuing theme of gratuitous violence towards women.

This book has much to recommend it. The clues point in many different directions which makes the mystery hard to solve until just the last few pages. I don't remember a better mystery in the series. The book also has a lot of good police procedural and legal defense procedural parts in it that make it more realistic than many other books in the series.

The development of the relationships among Goldy, Tom and Arch is particularly delightful in the book. There's also the usual fun with Marla as sidekick.

The recipes are particularly appealing with strawberry pie, enchilada pie, almond cookies, chocolate cake, brownie points and two kinds of breads among the delights to drool over . . . and to cook up for yourself. Obviously, Goldy is still immune from the Atkins and the South Beach diets.

So unless you are too busy baking for the upcoming holidays, give yourself a treat and enjoy sipping Double Shot!

Goldy's ex-husband, Dr. John Richard Korman or the Jerk as she and Marla, his other ex-wife, refer to him, has just had his sentence commuted by the governor.

Goldy is attacked and The Roundhouse sabotaged. She wonders if this could be the work of the Jerk. She doesn't let it stop her. With the help of Marla, Goldy's son Arch, Julian and Liz, the lunch following the funeral of Dr. Albert Kerr goes off without a hitch. Well, unless you call the confrontation she has with the Jerk outside after the lunch a hitch. He wants Arch at his place at 4 for their golf tee time. Goldy scrambles and arrives at the Jerk's place with Arch on time. But there's no Jerk. There is a guy asking Goldy for his money. She begins to wonder what the Jerk has gotten himself into this time. Goldy and Arch bang on the door to find the Jerk. He still hasn't come to the door, even after the man asking for money left. So Goldy goes around to his garage. Unfortunately inside she finds the Jerk shot to death.

There are many reasons Goldy is a major suspect. Arch blames her for his death. What more could go wrong.

Goldy, with Marla's help, begins to look into who could have wanted the Jerk dead. Unfortunately he was not a well-liked man. Tom, Goldy's husband, helps her as well as tries to keep her safe throughout the process.

Can Goldy figure out why the Jerk was killed and by whom without causing her son any more grief? Plus can she stay safe and keep Arch safe?

This was a very good book. I always like reading books in this series. The food descriptions really add to the wonderful mystery and investigation in each of her books. This was no exception.

There are some wonderful sounding recipes in the back, as well. Someday I hope to try making one.

Goldy and Marla have a way of getting into trouble, but they always make me laugh. They are great characters and so well developed. The additional characters in this book are just as rich. The Colorado setting adds to the story as well.

I highly recommend this book.

This is a very cleverly written mystery, the 12th in its series, featuring Goldy Schultz, a Colorado caterer and amateur sleuth. Someone is trying to sabotage her catering business. Before an important event, her kitchen is overrun by spoiling food and scurrying mice. Goldy suspects her villainous ex-husband John Korman, who has just been paroled by the governor of Colorado. Before she has a chance to confirm her suspicions, he turns up dead, shot by Goldy's stolen gun. A great read for people who like food and zany characters and superlative writing. Others I would recommend include Joanne Fluke, who writes about Hannah Swensen and includes recipes, and Pamela Troutman, whose detective in Deadly Diamonds guzzles champagne while he solves mysteries.

Caterer Goldy Schulz cannot believe the Governor of Colorado commuted the sentence of her ex-husband wealthy Dr. John Korman, imprisoned for aggravated assault for beating up a girlfriend like he did Goldy on numerous occasions. Still she cannot worry about the "Jerk" as she has an event to cater. However, not long after John is freed, harassment of Goldy begins that turns violent when she is knocked unconscious and the Memorial luncheon for Albert Kerr is ruined by mice and spoiled food. She has no doubt that John is involved with her woes. To make matters worse, the Jerk arrives at the Kerr memorial to yell at Goldy over their teenage son Arch.

Not long afterward, someone kills the Jerk with Goldy's stolen gun near the body. The Aspen police believe Goldy is the prime suspect although other members of the fifty-four conquest club have motives to see him dead including his only other former wife Marla. Even dead the Jerk interferes with Goldy's life so she decides to no longer wait for the detectives to find the killer; accompanied by her peer in the exclusive former wives' club, she and Marla investigate.

The death of long time nemesis the Jerk will be welcomed by readers as he had become an albatross to a fine culinary mystery series; thus his removal works on two levels as Goldy investigates his homicide to clear her name also. The story line is like a DOUBLE SHOT of fresh brewed coffee that fans will appreciate as the heroine and her amusing partner make for a fine feast. Except for the Atkins Diet crowd, readers will enjoy feasting on this solid entry.

Harriet Klausner

I was so fed up with Goldie's spoiled rotten brat of a son (Arch) for whom she was increasingly and slavishly bending over backwards to appease to no avail, that I had sworn off Diane Mott Davidson's Goldie the caterer series. That boy was like fingernails on the blackboard of my reading mind.

Fortunately, I was a huge fan of the TV show Sisters (Hey! Powers That Be! Please release that series on DVD!) and sister Georgie (Patricia Kalember,) is reading this book on CD so I gave Double Shot a shot.

Hallelujah and possibly due to all the negative reader feedback to Ms. Mott, Arch has reformed and actually noticed that he is not, as he previously believed, the center and focal point of the universe. The new improved Arch has empathy and compassion!

Ding Dong, Goldie's abusive ex-husband and Arch's daddy, Dr. John Richard Korman, is dead! And so are other residents and former residents of Aspen Meadow, Colorado (the Cabot Cove of this cozy catering caper series.) This installment is well plotted and paced with all the old gang and a tasty batch of newcomers from whom to select WhoDunnit. Kalember gives a fine reading. The drawback of the CD version is that the recipes for the delectable sounding edibles are not included :-( TundraVision, Amazon reviewer

Just like another reviewer, I had trouble with the 'Goldy as victim' plot that is the major theme for the beginning of this book. I almost stopped reading the book but decided to finish it. I am very glad that I did. The mystery is well done and not easily solvable. I really liked the layers that are added to each character - particularly Goldy and her past. If you have ever read any of the other books in the series and plan on reading more, this is a must read.

Kudos to the author for daring to change the basic 'script' of the series. I wish some of my other favorite mystery writers would follow her lead.

For more than a decade Diane Mott Davidson has been delighting readers with her Goldy Schultz culinary mystery series. And in this 12th installment in this engaging series, Ms Davidson delivers once again: "Double Shot" is a fast paced and totally absorbing read.

For Goldly Schultz, the past few weeks has been very trying: her abusive ex-husband, who had been imprisoned for assaulting one of his girlfriends, had had his sentence commuted because he had saved a prison guard's life. And now, the Jerk (as he's affectionately known to both his ex-wives, Goldy and her best friend, Karla) is free to make her life hellish all over again. But it never occurred to Goldy, even in her wildest dreams, that she'd find the Jerk dead in his own garage, and that she'd become the prime suspect in his murder. With the police (in spite of the fact that she's married to one of their more respected officers) looking at her in an unfriendly light, Goldy realizes that it's up to her to discover who killed the Jerk and why. Her investigation will take back to the early years of her marriage to the Jerk, and the chilling realization that things were not what they seemed...

Swiftly paced and very intriguing, "Double Shot" was an engrossing read from start to finish. The suspense is built around each new secret that Goldy uncovers about the people she thought she knew, and just how all this could affect her fragile relationship with her son (for reasons I cannot fathom, Goldy's son seems to be very attached to his cad of a father). Well crafted, and with a good storyline and superbly realized characters, "Double Shot" was an enjoyable read from start to finish.

Double Shot features the death and crimes of Dr. John Richard Korman as unraveled by his ex-wife Goldy Shultz while she is busy trying to continue to make her living as a caterer in the Denver suburbs. Those of us who read the other eleven books in the series, are familiar with her catering career and I was happy to note that it must be going well as in this book we find out early on that she has leased an old restaurant to have a regular venue for her catered events. In the past, we have learned of Dr. Korman's abusive personality and that while he was invariably charming to outsiders, his wives and girlfriends rarely escaped being beaten or worse. As a matter of fact, in the previous books, Dr. Korman was jailed after beating one girlfriend who complained.

In the first chapter of this book, Goldy is catering a funeral lunch for a colleague of her ex-husband. Bringing in the dessert in the morning of the event, she is attacked, beaten, and her food is spoiled while mice and rotten fish are spread throughout her new kitchen area. Not only that, but once she manages to recover the luncheon, her ex-husband shows up with his current girlfriend and creates a scene in front of the whole lunch crowd with Goldy. The next major event in the chapter is that his bullet riddled body is discovered by Goldy a few hours later and Goldy's gun is found next to his body.

So, with all the clues pointing to her, is it any wonder that the police and everyone else suspects her for finally and permanently getting rid of her ex-husband? Goldy puts on her investigative hat, calls on her friends and colleagues, and launches into an investigation of who really killed the ex. This causes even more complications as her current husband is a local police investigator who has his own problems to resolve; her son goes through various stages of grief and turns out to be harboring some secrets of his own and so forth.

Eventually, a second body is discovered, and then a third and a fourth, and a fifth death is connected to the first. None of these seem to be connected at first, but do come together in the end. The conclusion of the story ties it all together and neatly explains how children born out of wedlock fifteen years ago were connected to a rape eight years before, and then connected to a rash of murders in the present time. The story is fiendishly complicated and it takes most of the 350 pages before you are capable of figuring out the various connections. Let me offer one clue only, this is actually a story of the life of Dr. John Richard Korman - Goldy is an almost accidental participant!

I found this mystery to be delightful to read. The crimes were not simple and the plot was extremely imaginative. In addition to pointing out the difference between a man/woman relationship that is based on sex or lust, it points out relationships that are based on true love. The complicated personal relationships of the various characters that we normally find in this series continue to evolve in very believable ways - as the father of teenaged boys, I could understand Goldy's frustrations with reaching to her 15 year old son and his maturing as the story progressed.

Of course this story is fantastical in the way in which Goldy manages to pull all the pieces together while hordes of policemen - including her crack investigator of a husband - are uselessly running around trying to pin down the murder on Goldy! The resolution of the story into two or three parallel threads was ingeniously done but the tie-in between the threads was a bit too threadbare to be believable. But never mind these minor quibbles; this was an excellent story and a great book to read in this genre!

Recommended.

By the way, since this book features a caterer, there are a whole slew of recipes that are mentioned in the book, included in the back of the book. While I have yet to make any of them, several of them have been copied and placed in my stack of "must try" recipes!

Goldy's back in DOUBLE SHOT by the mistress of meals, mayhem & murder, Diane Mott Davidson, & this time Goldy's ex gets his just desserts. At last!

Someone clobbers Goldy early one morning as she's heading in to work at her new place of business. Then she discovers they've trashed everything & the place reeks of spoiled food.

Goldy's on edge because the governor of Colorado has commuted the handsome, charming & venal Dr. John Richard Korman's sentence. The ex who won't go away. Now he decides to harass Goldy, while she's catering a job. Still, trying to keep the peace because of their son, Goldy is determined to deliver him to his father for their weekly game of golf. Except when they get to the Jerk's house in an expensive subdivision, she finds him in his garage, very dead. & it's her gun that did it.

Who was that guy who suddenly appeared at her van door demanding his money?
How did the Jerk, straight out of prison, pay for such a swank home?
Which of his previous girlfriends has some rather dark feelings about being jilted for a younger, prettier model?
What secret from the Jerk's past is coming back to haunt Goldy in the present?

Apart from over-spicing the story with too many & too cute name-calling, & the absence of any counseling for her son after the sudden & vicious demise of his father, Rebeccasreads recommends DOUBLE SHOT as a worthy addition to this crafty culinary gumshoe's hectic life.