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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
No Reservations Required is required reading!, May 31, 2005
This review is from: No Reservations Required: A Culinary Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)
Minnesota mystery writer Ellen Hart knows how to spin a wonderful, face-paced, complex mystery with characters you love to love and characters you... Well, you just want to slap some of them - and hate the rest.
Businessman Ken Loy loves bike riding. And if you have to die, as Loy does, then it's great to die doing something you love. Being shot between the eyes, however, is not so great. A half an hour later, Bob Fabian, the wealthy owner of the "Minneapolis Times Register" is also shot. Interestingly the two murdered men have a connection. A year earlier Loy broadsided Fabian's wife's car, killing her instantly. A lot of people see only a coincidence. Sophie Greenway, food critic, doesn't believe it for a minute, and she begins asking questions that might bring danger knocking on her own door.
Coupled with the murders, there is the relationship between Sophie and her high school sweetheart, Nathan Buckridge - and between Sophie and her husband Bram's daughter, Margie - and between Sophie and her husband Bram. It all makes for an intense and exciting read. But I do so wish a certain young woman would get her comeuppance. Perhaps in the next Sophie Greenway mystery that will happen. One can only hope.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Par for the course, June 18, 2008
This review is from: No Reservations Required: A Culinary Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)
Ellen Hart seems to specialize in heroines who make profoundly stupid choices. She outdoes herself here when Sophie spends the whole book doing one dumb thing after another until she makes a lollapalooza of a boneheaded decision at the end.
Hart is not a great deal easier on her other characters. The women are, in varying degrees indecisive, spiteful, malicious, interfering, uncomprehending, neurotic and victimized. The men are contemptably weak, homicidal, suicidal, obtuse, generally incompetent and given to stalking.
This formula seems to please a goodly section of the reading public, since Ms. Hart has published many books and sold a lot of copies, hence the perhaps overgenerous three-star rating.
As for my own reaction, I must confess a certain guilty pleasure in reading page after page, speculating what imbecility will appear in the next chapter and then be topped in the one after that. In the, alas, all-too likely event that another Sophie Greenway misadventure is published, I'll probably be there to see by what outrageous contrivance the author extricates her hapless heroine from the virtually bottomless pit into which she was dropped at the end of "No Reservations Required."
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
fabulous amateur sleuth thriller, May 31, 2005
This review is from: No Reservations Required: A Culinary Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)
One year ago, Twin Cities businessman Ken Loy was driving while talking on a cell phone when his vehicle blindsided that of Valerie Fabian, killing her. Although the woman ran a stop sign, her spouse Minneapolis Times Register columnist Bob blamed Ken for not paying attention.
Ken remains shook up with the accident bringing him close to his two twin daughters raised by his ex-wife and whom he neglected previously. He rides his bike every evening to gain some relief, but this time he stops to check a construction site thinking he might buy a condo there. Someone arrives and executes him.
Valerie's brother Sonny informs Bob that he provided justice to their beloved's killer. A stunned Bob calls 911, but Sonny, feeling betrayed, kills him too.
Minneapolis Times Register restaurant critic Sophie Greenway learns that the victims who were murdered within an hour of one another were killed by the same gun. No one can figure out the motive that ties both homicides although the link to Valerie is obvious. Sophie cooks up a storm that does not match the recipe for murder that will shake her inner essence.
Readers will want to make reservations for this fabulous amateur sleuth thriller that provides strong twists that the reader will never see coming especially the ending that will blow away the audience. Sophie is the terrific main ingredient while the support cast provides depth to a darker than usual story line. Ellen Hart bakes a winner with her eighth Greenway culinary mystery.
Harriet Klausner
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