Sticks & Scones (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Her first big catering gig in weeks has Goldy Bear Schulz salivating. But before she can collect her Elizabethan-inspired recipes (Queen of Scots Shortbread, Damson-in-Distress Plum Tart) and hie herself to the restored English castle in Colorado where she's putting on a donor's luncheon in Hyde Chapel and a high school fencing banquet in the castle's Great Room, someone blows a hole in her living room window. No sooner has she unloaded her pots and pans at the catering venue than another someone--or maybe the same one--shoots a hole in her detective husband, Tom. To make matters worse, Goldy's ex-husband has just been released from jail, and he seems to have a few reasons to want to kill her, too.

Between trying to solve the riddle of the castle ghost, keep her son Arch and her wounded husband safe, and get the food on the table while it's still hot, Goldy is up to her elbows in trouble. The would-be lord of the manor still looks like a business-builder for Goldy, but his Swiss-born wife seems a little wacky. And even from a sickbed, Tom's got a crime wave on his hands that seems to involve Goldy's ex, his flashy new girlfriend, the castle owner, and the dead man Goldy found floating in the castle moat. Not to mention a woman Tom once loved, who seems to have returned from the dead and is causing Goldy no end of distress. But Diane Mott Davidson's gutsy, multitalented series heroine (Prime Cut, Tough Cookie) triumphs again--the proof is in the reading as well as the eating in this fast-paced, frothy dessert. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Culinary sleuth Goldy Schulz finesses another catering job by the skin of her teeth in her 11th warm and fuzzy adventure from bestseller Davidson (Prime Cut, etc.). Goldy is preparing to cater two events at the baronial estate-cum-conference center outside Denver where she and her family are staying. While waiting for a delivery, she discovers the body of one of a gang of philatelic thieves and sees her husband, Tom, wounded by a sniper. A rich feast of false clues and red herrings follows. While Tom recuperates, Goldy is free to investigate the shooter. Embarking on a series of unpleasant and improbable personal encounters, as well as demanding meal preparations, she uncovers a string of clues that not only implicate her hosts, her son's coach and her ex (now out on parole), but raise questions about her marriage to Tom. Fortunately, the author grants Goldy a few brief respites in which to settle her thoughts, allowing the reader to regroup before taking off on the next hectic sequence. Davidson has garnished her story with a rich sauce of old feuds, double-dealing and marital secrets that overwhelms her basic ingredients of credible characters (adolescent son Arch, in particular, rings true), good food and an intriguing puzzle. In the end, Goldy gets her culprit, the guests get their meals and readers, perhaps not so much sated as stuffed, get several excellent recipes. The jacket which sports a teapot in the guise of a surly butler holding a gun will be instantly recognized by the author's devotees. Agent, Sandra Dijkstra.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; First Edition edition (April 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553107240
• ISBN-13: 978-0553107241
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #945,311 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #45 in

  Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Authors, A-Z > ( D ) > Davidson, Diane Mott

• This is item 10 in The Goldy Schulz Culinary Mystery Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sticks and Scones is a disappointment, April 11, 2001

By A Customer

As a longtime reader of Mott Davidson's, I found STICKS AND SCONES disappointingly disjointed and implausible....Loose ends, and too many leaps of logic. Besides which, juvenile son, Arch, gets more tediously obnoxious as the years go by with NO redeeming qualities, and ex-husband, John Richard, keeps up harassment that NO wife of a police officer would ever have to endure. I know this is fiction, but no heroine can be interesting being as much of a career victim as Goldy is.

Even the recipes in this book are disappointing.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Goldy goes Gothic, April 17, 2001

By	TundraVision (o/~ from the Land of Sky Blue Waters o/~) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Goldy the caterer and her crew are back with more murder and tasty morsels. The action this time centers around an English castle which has been dismantled, moved, and re-assembled in the Colorado Rockies (think Jerry Jeff Walker: o/~ "even London Bridge is falling down and moved to Arizona" o/~ The characterizations here are much better than the disappointments of Goldy's most recent prior endeavors, but her whiney son and his adulation of his abusive father is really beginning to grate.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great recipes and fun mystery......, October 15, 2001

By	jeanne-scott (Asan, Guam) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Diane Mott Davidson has done it again, another fun mystery involving Goldy, the caterer/sleuth along with murder and missing valuable stamps, not to mention an appearance by Goldy's husband's old girlfriend. The story begins with Goldy's picture window being shot out, a suspect in a police case turning up dead near a catering sight, and after that , the clues and suspects mount up faster than the calories in the recipes!! There are wonderful recipes for scones, shortbread cookies and the totally fantastic and irrestible chocolate emergency 911 cookies!!! Davidson's mysteries are fun and interesting, and while some may find them a bit of a stretch for their imagination, the story is very entertaining and enjoyable. You will not be dissapointed. The characters are interesting, and some of them are really out there, and that is what makes the story move! I have read all of this series of books, and while some are better than others, this one is one of the most fun!!