Murder by Cheesecake: A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery doesn't require its subtitle's penultimate modifier: anyone who has ever watched The Golden Girls (1985-1992)--and who hasn't watched the classic sitcom centered on four middle-aged-and-up Miami housemates? --knows that one of the show's signatures is "cozy." Another is "witheringly funny," a quality abounding in Rachel Ekstrom Courage's welcome first title in a projected series.
Rose is planning the wedding of a cousin who was like a niece to her back in their hometown of St. Olaf, Minn. During the prewedding Welcome Tuna Teatime (it's a St. Olaf tradition) at the groom's family's Miami hotel, Rose finds a corpse in an industrial freezer; the dead man is holding a knife, and he's facedown in a cheesecake made by Rose. Did her cheesecake kill the guy? Suspect-wise, the police are more interested in Rose's housemate Dorothy, who identifies the corpse as the man with whom she went on a recent (and terrible) date. Can the four housemates solve the murder and clear Dorothy's name?
Courage succeeds valiantly at creating interior lives for Rose and Dorothy that ring true to their TV personas. Critically, she has a fan's ear for the show's rapid-fire dialogue and a superfan's eye for its decor (the rattan!) and fashions (those blazers!). As a mystery, Murder by Cheesecake is serviceable; as an entertainment, it's a delight and a gift to Golden Girls fans who had given up all hope of a new adventure for the fearsome foursome. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer