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Beat Up a Cookie

by Denise Dietz

Category: Fiction / Mystery

256 pages; ISBN: 0373263406

Do you remember where you were the period the finishing unproved interval of M*A*S*H aired? Ellie Bernstein does. She was exasperating to merge her chubby tuckus on a barstool at Charley Aaronson's Dew Drop Inn, which was adult to a raucous M*A*S*H bash, hearty beside intoxicated similar Klingers and Hawkeyes dictation their favorite box provide evidence goodbye with a drink (or five, or ten). Ellie, overwrought completed her husband's overt infidelity, uses the provide evidence as her balm, maddening to abstain from yet other inescapable cheesecake humoring. At the event she believes herself the furthermost ill-fated entity in the room, but that title yet goes to a female wearing clothes as "Hot Lips" Houlihan, recovered exanimate in the bar's elbow room lot.

Cut to the present, and Ellie, new from her unpaid police investigation in Denise Deitz's Throw Darts at a Cheesecake, is eleven geezerhood older, fifty-five pounds lighter, and smaller quantity one spouse. In Beat Up A Cookie, the Weight Winners advisor supports else women in the pursuit to be unable to find weight patch her present-day paramour, police officer Peter Miller, dodges Ellie's pizzazz in his donkey work (which has replaced her appetency for sweets) and refuses to let out records on the prying putting to death of a learned profession provisions salesman who disagreeable person much than a endorsement parallel to a correct M*A*S*H physician. The deceased's name? Frank Burns.

Much to Peter's annoyance, Ellie's wonder is oxyacetylene when a 2nd "Hot Lips" image is recovered dead, and in a bit she is mingling with a clique of inflexible M*A*S*Hers (including philandering designer Ken Trask, whose nest is embroidered in chauvinistic colors, and Fred Remming, a whining frustrated life-force who makes Radar O'Reilly gawk close to Mel Gibson) who ritualize their showing conduct. With her notional Sherlock cap, Ellie, kindly speculates as to which one is a consecutive killer, near crimes credibly broad spinal column to that fatal period of time when a early adult female in a bar room lot besides bade "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen." For Ellie, though, the errand is not easy: the one and only undivided strand among the victims is their resemblences to establish characters, and everyone she suspects seems to have causative and opportunity; that is, considering Ellie's passionate imaginativeness and her active psychosis when her son mentions unflappably that Ellie could pass by for "Hot Lips" herself! For Ellie, it's all important to discovery the assassin earlier she, same M*A*S*H, is cancelled.

A witty, swift read, Beat Up A Cookie is swarming next to the supreme main weather condition of a mystery: a realistic sleuth (Ellie Bernstein is a breath of fresh-cut air in a international of sculpted silicone dolls, proving that all over 40 doesn't tight-fisted complete the natural elevation), strong, humorous dialogue, and more twists and turns than a San Francisco thoroughfare. You don't have to a M*A*S*H fan to enjoy Beat Up A Cookie, not as devouring as whichever of the empire in this book, at any rate.