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Title: To Kill a Matzo Ball
Author: Delia Rosen
First Published: July 2014
Published By: Kensington
Format Read: ARC, Paperback
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Read: March 5 2015
Rating: 2/5
I received a copy of To Kill a Matzo Ball by Delia Rosen as
a bonus to a GoodReads giveaway, which was offered by the publisher.
Leaving behind her job on Wall Street, Gwen Katz inherits
her Uncle Murray’s deli in Nashville Tennessee. To Kill a Matzo Ball is the 5th
book in Rosen’s Deadly Deli Mystery Series and begin 14 months after Gwen took
over the restaurant. One busy morning, Gwen meets with a customer by the name
of Ken Chan who is interested in hiring her catering services for a belt
ceremony at his Kung Fu Academy. During their consultation a shot is fired from
outside and Chan saves Gwen’s life by tackling her to the ground. Unfortunately
in doing so, he took the fatal bullet himself. Now Gwen takes it upon herself (against
the wishes of her former flame; a detective) to uncover who exactly was the
target for the attack; Chan or herself. With the help of another deli customer,
Banko Juarez and his etheric reading computer software, she begins investigating
the Kung Fu school. She learns that the attack could have been perpetrated by a
rival Chinese gang or a group of racist supremacists.
Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy To Kill a Matzo Ball as much as
I would have liked to. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to connect with Gwen
or the story at all. Normally in Cozy Mysteries, lack of realism is compensated
with humour. To me, the main character was careless and not in a humorous or
charming way. I wonder if I would have felt more of a connection with Gwen, had
I read the previous books in the series. This may have given me a better
understanding of her back-story. Although the author does make mention of the
past, I didn’t feel like it was enough to fill in the holes for me. This makes
To Kill a Matzo Ball less of a stand-alone novel.
My opinion aside, the story did move along at a good pace
and got to the point of the plot in a matter of pages, which was nice. I was
also pleased to see that the author ended off with a traditional Jewish recipe:
Potato Knish, with an added southern flair.
In conclusion I think that this Cozy Mystery would be better suited to previous fans of the series.
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