Mystery & Crime, Teen Fiction, Fiction Subjects

Throw Darts at a Cheesecake

Name: Throw Darts at a Cheesecake
Author: Denise Dietz
ISBN: 9780802712370

by Denise Dietz

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Overview

Weight Winners, in Colorado Springs, is a support group for people who want to lose weight, and under the direction of Ellie Bernstein, it was working. Until the day Jeannie, the sweetest, most supportive person in the world, died. Under any other circumstances, Ellie would have loved meeting the tall man standing in the doorway, doing serious damage to an apple. But Peter Miller's a homicide detective, and he's there to ask questions. Awful questions . . . like who would want to murder Jeannie Dobson? Ellie doesn't believe it's murder and neither do the other members of the group. Until the next "accident" strikes a dieter, and another and another. It seems that as people approach target weight, something happens to them. Then Ellie discovers that she's being stalked, and it becomes clear that she's going to have to spend a lot of time with Miller . . . and that she'll have to start doing some investigating on her own. Ellie considers herself a pretty fair detective, but she learns quickly that murderers don't always play fair, and the weight loss she's helping her friends achieve could become permanent in a way they never imagined.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This lighthearted but sometimes lackluster murder debut features a spunky middle-aged protagonist who has her appealing moments despite a tendency to silly behavior that defies common sense. Divorcee Ellie Bernstein is the group leader for her Weight Winners class meeting in a Colorado Springs church. When one of the most popular members dies fully clothed in a full bathtub, Ellie writes it off as an accident. Another accident involving club members (a van goes off a cliff while inside the couple are making love) seems a little more suspicious, but the death of yet another Weight Winner, an elderly woman found skewered by her knitting needles, is definitely murder. When attractive homicide cop detective Lt. Peter Miller brusquely turns down Ellie's offer to help investigate she sets off on her own to find out who is killing former fatties who are closest to their weight goals. Though Dietz's mystery has an inviting premise, it is flawed by pedestrian prose. (Oct.)