Customer Reviews

A Slice of Murder (A Pizza Lover's Mystery)

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

 

 

the title interested me & I always enjoy a good mystery. I'm new to this author & thoroughly enjoyed the people of Timber Ridge, North Carolina. Eleanor & Maddy kept sleuthing while keeping the pizzeria open...I really enjoyed their ups & downs & would look forward to reading 'just one more chapter' ...finished the book in two days !..another book about them would be most welcome...a great read..highly revcommend it !! thank you !

I picked this book up because it was from an author I hadn't heard of before.
The whole time I was reading this book, I kept thinking I know this author.. I know this author. Now, I find out it is Tim Myers.
I don't care what name he uses,I love his books.
I enjoyed meeting new characters and feeling my way through the plot
and emotions of the town people. A good cozy read.
I hope there is another book on the way.
Maybe add some pizza recipes in the next installment. I'll bite.

Eleanor Swift is a thirty-something widow who owns a pizzeria in a small North Carolina town. One evening she discovers the body of one of her customers when she delivers a pizza to his home. The police Chief (obviously operating under the premise that "whoever smelt it, dealt it") is convinced that Eleanor committed the murder. Along with her sister, Maddy, Eleanor sets out to find the real killer.

I really didn't enjoy this and I felt that it was missing many of the elements that I look for in a "cozy" mystery.

What do I want from a "cozy"? I want a protagonist that I feel like I come to know and care about. I want to be drawn into the characters' lives via the domestic details. I want a sense of "place"; I like to feel as if I'm getting a picture of what gives each town it's unique regional flavor.

Despite the first person narrative, I really found out very little about Eleanor. She misses her late husband. Got it. Other than that, there were few personal details; certainly not nearly enough for me to form a picture of her as a character. I know that the story takes place in a small southern town. I know this because the author told me so in the first few pages, otherwise it could easily have taken place in upstate New York or just about anywhere else for that matter. I never got a "feel" for the town or it's residents; nothing in the narrative made the region come alive for me. The dialog between Eleanor and Maddie had such an awkward feel to it; it was stilted and didn't sound like two sisters having a conversation.

As for the mystery...I know this is a "cozy" and I'm not asking for realism, just a little plausibility. If Eleanor was the prime suspect, why wasn't she taken into custody (at least for questioning) the night of the murder? Little things like blood splatter on skin and clothing are easily disposed of - who would allow their chief suspect to go home and shower away the evidence? And Eleanor and Maddy's one and only investigative technique seemed to be walking up to people and asking "Hey, did you kill the guy?".

Now I do think there is some potential here and perhaps the author does develop the characters more fully in the next installments, but honestly it didn't pique my interest enough to want to continue with the series.

No strong language or sexual content.

A SLICE OF MURDER should more aptly be entitled A Soggy, Cardboard Mess. The saving grace for this attempt is having the murder victim already dead by the time the main character arrives with a pizza delivery. Readers at least do not have to wade though pages of stale pabulum to get the action started. From the high point of the opening pages, however, the plot and character presentation go cold from there. The author fails to establish any empathy for/with the main character who pines for a dead husband while running a pizzeria in North Carolina and being generally disagreeable in most of her interactions. Nothing sizzling, bubbly or even salty about this babe. The effort to create connections between the main character and the local chief of police, based on a bygone failed small town high school attraction, is unpalatable. The guy must be either suffering from serious functional dyspepsia or a personality disorder and makes sure everyone is as unhappy as he. Dialog between the main character and her insipid sister, the partner in sleuthing adventures and running the pizzeria, would earn a failing grade for any college freshman. And what's with their tangential grousing with one another? For my tastes, this book should be classified in the same category as the local food market's buy-one-get-three-free frozen pizzas - definitely not the real thing. The most attractive part of such amateurish culinary attempts is the box, and in the case of this amateurish writing, the dust cover. There is little substance, quality or appeal. Regrettably the only reason I finished reading this flop was to ensure I could write a competent warning for others. No wonder this book was published under a nom de plume. If one is looking for colorful, believable, charismatic characters and strong plots with a food theme, check out Sheila Connolly's apple orchard series. Yum! A Slice of Murder (Pizza Lover's Mysteries)

The only thing disappointing about this book is that the pizza shop could be in a small town pretty much anywhere. After reading "A Timely Vision" set in Duck, NC I was really hoping for more of a local feel but aside from some passing references there is not much sense of place here. That being said, it's a good story with good characters and really believable dialogue (especially for anyone who has a sister). I'd recommend it and will look forward to the next in the series.

Eleanor Swift is delivering a pizza from her restaurant only to find the person who ordered it is dead. The sheriff suspects her right away as she found the body and had history with the victim. Fearing that she will lose her pizza place (the only thing she has to remind herself of her late husband), she and her sister start investigating in hopes of clearing Eleanor.

Sounds fun, right? It was, mostly. But I had two big problems with this one. First was the fact that even though the sisters are "investigating" the murder, there's really no mystery. Eleanor doesn't figure it out, she just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and the killer tries to take her out. Also, not too far into the book, you realize who the killer is as there really is nobody else who could've done it, and you spent another 250 pages waiting for the sisters to catch up to you.

The second major problem was that some of the characters were too unbelievable, especially the Sheriff. He seems to be fixated on Eleanor being the killer, and refuses to even entertain the idea that someone else did it. This drove me crazy after a while, and his sheepish apologies at the end (including some dark family secrets) seemed too contrived and tacked on.

Still, you learn a lot about pizza restaurants which is what intrigued me enough to pick this up. I'm not sure I'll read the second. Maybe I might get it from the library and see if Chris Cavendar (a pseudonym for Tim Myers) has made some strides in this series.

I don't know what made me pick up "A Slice of Murder" -- a hardcover by an author I'd never heard of; maybe I was hungry and the thought of a murder cozy set in a pizza parlor appealed at the moment. But I was ultimated disappointed.

There is just not enough space to mention everything that was wrong with this book but some things stuck out more than others. Please note there might be minor SPOILERS touched upon.

The heroine, Eleanor, finds a body when she arrives to deliver a pizza. She calls the cops and who shows up but the Chief of Police himself (who happens to be an old boyfriend) with no backup or even another cop in the patrol car with him. To make the scene even more unbelievable, he immediately tags Eleanor as a suspect because she had slapped the dead guy in public a few weeks before this. Quite a motive for murder! Eleanor and her annoying sister, Maddy, decide they must solve the crime themselves since it's the only way to keep Eleanor out of jail.

The story goes downhill from there. There is a lot of unresolved "clutter" throughout the rest of the book. For instance, Eleanor's husband, Joe, was the one who really started the pizzeria but he died leaving her heartbroken and running the business. Although Joe is mentioned a lot, there is no hint to how he died. And there is the faithful suitor who has apparently been waiting for Eleanor to get over Joe. This wannabe-relationship added absolutely nothing to the story and was, in fact, a bit creepy. And then there's the Police Chief's son, Josh, who evidentially does not have to go to school, who for unnamed reasons idolizes Eleanor, and who, despite being a "good kid" isn't believed when he tells his father what he saw the night of the murder.

The mystery itself (who dunnit) was hardly a mystery and boy, I'm glad I don't live in Timber Ridge because the police force there is totally incompetent. The murder is committed one evening and the murder scene -- the guy's house -- is released to his sister the next morning!! There is apparently no investigation into the victim's finances, his contacts, his neighbors, nothing! There is no mention as to whether or not there were fingerprints on the murder weapon, whether anyone was questioned, etc. When several people tell the Chief that they saw the victim speeding around town being chased, the Chief dismisses their stories as lies to support Eleanor and doesn't even consider checking it out. When Eleanor calls the police to accompany her to a fishy set-up where someone ordered a pizza to be delivered to any empty lot, again the Chief shows up and actually allows her to go (although he comes, too). No police officer would consider such a thing! When - surprise - her car is shot at, the Chief dismisses it as a robbery attempt! This despite the fact that she makes it known that she hasn't been doing deliveries so she'd have no money on her...

On top of all this, the murderer (who is painfully obvious from the beginning) has absolutely no real reason to 1) kill the victim and 2) kill Eleanor. Although the murderer sure makes several foolish attempts at it throughout the book.

The characters are all flat. There is no sense of "bonding" with the heroine. Eleanor is whiney and sniffles occassionally about her dead husband. Her sister Maddy is really irritating and most of the book is taken up with the two of them bickering and insulting each other. Even the pizzeria didn't do it for me. I usually love cozies and find myself interested in whatever the theme is; if the story is in a coffee house, I want coffee. In a vintage clothing store, I want to go look. But I didn't get any urge for pizza from "Slice".

I find that Chris Cavender is a pen name for Tim Myers who has authored quite a few mysteries under his own name. I haven't read any of his previous works and probably won't. It's surprising that a well-published author would write such a bad book. As much as I wanted to like it, "A Slice of Murder" just didn't deliver!!

This is an easy read, but hard to get into. The characters are whiny and non-believable. The sheriff would've been brought up on charges long ago if he were real, and the main "heroine" cries over her dead husband at every turn. It actually becomes irritating. The murderer is easy to spot from the beginning, and the ending doesn't make any sense. I'm stopping at "one slice" and not going to read the rest of the series...

First off I always feel duped when a cozy writer writes multiple series with different names. I can understand when you change genre you might want to change an authors name, but when you write within the same classification, why not use one single name.

Well, that rant being said, Eleanor is trying to make ends meet by continuing to run a pizzeria, A Slice of Delight, which she and her recently deceased husband had started together.

Near closing one evening she is called to make a delivery to Richard Olsen, but instead of getting the delivery tip she was anticipating, she is accused of his murder when he is discovered with a knife sticking out of his chest.

Though interesting, the storyline follows the rather typical pattern of amateur sleuth, ditzy sister and a small host of people that both lookout for each other and point fingers at the same time.

This is not the worst in the genre that I have read, and thank goodness, there was not a cleaver cat to help solve the mystery, but for the most part, there wasn't anything to really draw the reader back for more. Whether Cavender is writing as Tim Myers, or Elizabeth Bright or Melissa Glaser, the stories all fall within the same typical cozy mystery pattern.

If you are looking for easy entertainment, it is a good read, there are a few choppy points that had me wondering, but if you do not look too closely and like your mysteries on the light side, give it a try.

The entire time I was reading this book I thought the sheriff was totally unprofessional and unreasonable so much so that it ruined the book for me. Even the most bumbling of sheriffs/law enforcement in other books were easier to take than this character.

I like the heroine and her sister, but not enough to enjoy the book.

I will try another book by this author, but I hope the sheriff plays a small part or changes his attitude.