Blurb:
Move
over, Miss Marple—Mark Reutlinger’s charming cozy debut introduces readers to
the unforgettable amateur sleuth Rose Kaplan and her loyal sidekick, Ida.
Everyone
knows that Rose Kaplan makes the best matzoh ball soup around—she’s a regular
matzoh ball maven—so it’s no surprise at the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for
Jewish Seniors when, once again, Mrs. K wins the honor of preparing the beloved
dish for the Home’s seder on the first night of Passover.
But
when Bertha Finkelstein is discovered facedown in her bowl of soup, her death
puts a bit of a pall on the rest of the seder. And things go really meshugge
when it comes out that Bertha choked on a diamond earring earlier stolen from
resident Daisy Goldfarb. Suddenly Mrs. K is the prime suspect in the police
investigation of both theft and murder. Oy vey—it’s a recipe for disaster,
unless Rose and her dear friend Ida can summon up the chutzpah to face down the
police and solve the mystery themselves.
Review
by Rochelle Weber:
Mrs.
Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death
is told in first person by Mrs. K’s best friend, side-kick, and
God-forbid-we-should-get-caught accomplice, Ida Berkowitz. And since the
manuscript is peppered with Yiddish words and phrases, how could a meshggina shiksa (crazy gentile gal)
like me possibly understand it? Well, first, Mrs. Berkowitz (aka Mr.
Reutlinger) puts the Yiddish words in italics with the English translations in
parentheses, as I just did. And second, we live in a multicultural world. I can’t
tell you how many times I’ve cried my way through Fiddler on the Roof, or laughed as Nora Dunn declared she was, “…getting
a little verklempt,” and told the
audience to, “Talk amongst yourselves” on Saturday
Night Live. I grew up watching comics on TV who paid their dues at resorts
in the Catskills, known as “The Borscht Belt.” If you pay attention, Baby walks
out of the dining room as the resort owner introduces the comic in Dirty Dancing. So, to make a short story
long, I was able to hear Mrs. B’s voice in full Yiddish cadence just fine,
which greatly enhanced my reading experience, nu? (right?)
Rose Kaplan is not only
the matzoh ball soup maven at the Julius and
Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors, she’s probably the smartest person
there, including the staff. Since Bertha Finkelstein was found face-down in her
soup having choked on Daisy Goldfarb’s stolen earring, and no one else was
allowed in the kitchen while Rose was making the soup, the staff and police
figure they have an open-and-shut case. But Rose knows she did not put that earring there, and she’s
pretty sure she’d have noticed if someone had stuffed it into the flour or one
of the other ingredients. So, she sets out to prove her innocence and find the
culprit with her best-friend, Ida Berkowitz in tow. Ida doesn’t always know
what Rose is going to do next, but Oy Vey! God forbid they should get caught!
Mrs.
Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death
is a warm, witty, suspenseful book that hooked me on the first page and kept me
laughing and wondering along with Ida what plot Mrs. K. was going to come up
with next to dig up evidence on someone else and find the real culprit/s and
clear her name. They go so far as to hire a burglar to search some of the
residents’ rooms during a concert, but the burglar is delayed and breaks a leg
before she can get to the final room, so Mrs. K. climbs through the window
herself with Ida on guard outside on movie night. I wanna be like her when I
grow up!
If you’re reading this
review before November 18, 2014, reserve your copy now! Otherwise, buy it now! I’m
having aftershocks of chuckles just thinking about the book as I write this
review. And I’m craving matzoh ball soup. Know of any place in the far north
Chicago suburbs that serves a gluten-free version?
Length:
Page Count TBA
Digital
Price: $2.99
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$2.40. If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.
Downloading the file
from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your
computer to a USB flash drive. Plug the larger USB end of your chord into a USB
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statement.
Thanks for visiting. Rose,
Julie, Donna, & Rochelle
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