Customer Reviews

Throw Darts at a Cheesecake

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

 

 

I was expecting a funny, cozy, whodunnit mystery with some nice characters who were struggling with their weight just like me... Instead, the book is closer to a gruesome slasher. I didn't find myself liking any of the characters, and they were getting knocked off at a very alarming rate. I didn't find the book humorous or entertaining at all. There are too many fun mysteries out there to bother with this one (Jill Churchill, Leslie Meier, Katherine Hall Page, Joan Hess, etc. etc.)

If you want a murder mystery that reads like a Weight Watcher propoganda indoctrination, then read this book. Every page is filled with Weight Watchers spiel. You can tell the writer lived the WW life right down to the scales and the constant water drinking. All the meeting stuff is very realistic. Yes, I am a WW backslider, so sue me.

If you want to read an interesting book filled with interesting characters, interesting conflicts and well thought out plot lines, then run and find another book. The writing style is stilted. The dialogue is bad. The writing connecting it all together is bad.

If you want to read about interesting fat people in mysterious circumstances, read Kathleen Taylor's mystery series. It's set in South Dakota with a fat crime fighter. It is hilariously well thought out and very clever.

The cheesecake is not well plotted at all. She gives a quote from Gilda Ratner in the FIRST full paragraph which tells the book title. -please- The opening page is so important. It establishes the whole premise for the book. The opening page sets the stage. It should be catchy, but certainly not reveal in the 2nd line the whole reason for the title forgoodnesssake.

Author Denise Dietz has written a book whose time has come....readers will laugh away the pounds as they work out the deadly puzzle Dietz has set in a modern bastion of defense against the curse of an overfed society. Weight Watchers beware! Dietz serves chilling murders among hot fudge sundaes as her protaganist searches for the calorie killer. A good solid mystery.

Ugh! This first-in-the-series 1999 mystery was creepy in ways the author never intended. The heroine is a diet group leader; the victims, members of the group. Even given that setting, the morbid fascination with weight and eating overwhelms this routine plot. There are near-fetishistic descriptions of tongues and teeth and lips in the act of mastication. Also overdone is the implicit contempt for people who are heavy.

In this book, fat people are stupid and crude (confusing semen with "piss" -- I ask you!); fat people are smelly, dirty, and ugly; fat people are wife beaters and worse; fat people don't want, deserve, or get to have sex (but people celebrating losing weight are so attractive and so lusty, they can't even wait to get home).

Our murderer is seen as extra-evil because he's killing off the soon-to-be-thin. The subtext is that the death of a fat person is not as much of a loss (forgive the pun!), and the death of at least one of the victims is greeted with, "Oh, but she was so close to her goal weight!" That's the tragedy -- not that she's dead, but that she died before making goal. The author also spends a great deal of time noting that one near-victim escapes burning alive through a narrow window only because she had lost so many pounds and inches; had she not, well, fry-time! And it would have been her own fault, so there!

Of course, all this applies only to the unrepentant fat. People trying to lose weight are treated with elaborate faux-pity disguised as treacly "support."

The heroine fulfills all the Stupid-Woman clichés of the genre. She boinks the detective, with no regard for the conflict of interest therein (and if the heroine doesn't notice it, surely the author should?) She tells him, over and over, that she's a pretty good detective herself, though there is nothing in the book's set-up to suggest this. She insists, completely without foundation, that the deaths of four people of her group of twenty or so -- in a single week -- must all be accidents, and not murders at all. She not once but several times intentionally evades the guards which have been set on her for her own protection. She turns felon to "obtain evidence" -- evidence which could never, of course, then be used in court, right? So let's add obstruction of justice to breaking and entering, not to mention remorselessly lying to her new lover and putting his job at risk amid great professional embarrassment -- none of which the author mentions even in passing. And last but not least, during the inevitable chase scene, she -- what? you know this part? -- SHE FALLS DOWN. Yes! Not even over a tree root! Not even from a broken heel! She falls down because, well, that's what women in peril DO.

I picked up (at the library, thank goodness) a couple of other books by this author but just couldn't get started. The weight fascination continues in 2000's "Beat Up a Cookie" -- the back cover's focus on the heroine's 55-pound weight loss was enough to turn me off that one, though since it's part of this series, you'd expect some of that. But I'd also picked up "Fifty Cents For Your Soul," a slightly-out-of-genre horror mystery with an entirely different cast of characters, written in 2002. By the third sentence of Chapter One, the heroine is obsessing on skim milk versus whatever, and that did it for me. Ptui!

If you want mysteries about food -- with a heroine who wants to lose weight but doesn't need to mention it on every page -- try the first eight books in the Goldy Bear catering mysteries by Diane Mott Davidson. Until the series goes irredeemably bad with book #10 (Sticks & Scones), those books are pretty darned good, and while Davidson lets her heroine slip into Stupid Woman behavior now and then, at least it's NEW behavior (being manipulated by her son, not calling the cops often enough on an abusive ex) instead of the old standards Dietz serves up amid all the rice cakes and carrots.

I loved this book. In fact, I couldn't put it down until I finished it. Same for Ms. Dietz's second diet club mystery, Beat Up a Cookie. Now I'm hoping for a third in the series. Soon! I highly recommend Throw Darts at a Cheesecake. You won't be sorry you bought it, and that's a promise.

Ms. Dietz has a good story plot line through out. I just was less than awed. I felt for the characters and wanted to get through it. There were times that I couldn't put it down. Yet there were times that classified as a cozy, things were a little too detailed from other cozy mysteries that I have read. She kept all the character story lines separate and I was impressed.

Ellie was learning to get over things that had happened in her life. She was looking out for the people she helped lose the weight to get healthy. She has a good heart and had the right motives. Peter Miller was human in this book as well. He had a case to solve but he made sure all the people in the group who had been attacked or could be next had protection. I also loved Wanda. She was there and stuck through it even though her husband was less than supportive. She kept plugging along and brushed it off.

This mystery was interesting but some of the minor characters drove me bonkers. If someone were to go on this kind of endeavor of losing weight, support is something that is needed throughout the whole journey. I was less than impressed with some of the minor characters. I don't want to say a whole lot just because well the book fell flat in parts. Humor is needed but Tubby and Lulu seemed to take it to the negative extremes. Yeah, not sure I want to pick up the next one. I am hoping it is better. It was an interesting mystery and had no clue who was behind it all. The clues were there once it was revealed. Like I said previously, things were a little over the top.

I agree with the others who were critical of this awful book. I too hoped it would be a good cozy, with thoughtful characters and a decent mystery. I ended up skimming to the end, just to see which horrible person was the killer (and you could take your pick, I didn't like any of the characters). At the ending I rolled my eyes and then threw the book in the trash. I love books, and have never, ever thrown one away. I wouldn't even pass this so-called mystery on to anyone else to read. There are so many great authors, don't waste your time on this one. In addition to the other authors mentioned to read instead-- please read Dana Stabenow, J S Borthwick, Jan Burke, Nevada Barr, Jerrilyn Farmer, Paula Gosling, Sarah Graves, Charlaine Harris, Carolyn Haines, Joan Hess, Jill Churchill (and I think Churchill was mentioned-- it bears repeating). And so many more--

OK, I have read both the good and the bad reviews, and I am somewhere in between. I am a Weight Watchers member, so that aspect made the book more interesting to me, because I understood the struggles, joys, jokes and tears of the members of the Weight Winners circle. The WW parts made the book more enjoyable for me. That said, my first impression upon reading it was that it was not written by a professional author. (I was surprised to see Dietz had other novels out there.) Some characters were pretty stereotypical, and the dialogue was sometimes too rapid fire between the Ellie and Peter. It seemed like it would have fit in with a 1940s sexual tension film noir flick, but I didn't think it worked that way in print. However....I did enjoy this book, probably more so that the average reader because of my WW experience.

Okay, I admit it, I'm a Weight Watchers member and was intrigued by the plot of this book because of the focus on dieters and mystery. And to put it bluntly, I was also looking for something to keep my mind off food. And guess what? This book worked - I lost 5 pounds in the time it took to finish the book, less than a week. Every time I wanted a doughnut or a chocolate eclair, I read another chapter. Having said that, I should add that you'll love this book even if you haven't counted a single calorie in your life. It is fun trying to find out who is killing the Great Dieters of America -and why. Now I just have to get my hands on Denise Dietz's other mysteries, so I can keep my eyes on the page - and my hands out of the cookie jar!