Murder, mayhem, and matrimonial mishegoss in Miami - An ARC review of Murder By Cheesecake: A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery by Rachel Ekstrom Courage

I love me a cozy mystery (preferably set in the Cotswolds, featuring a cast of cardigan-clad villagers, and scads of scones with clotted cream) as much as the next girl. Yet, as you well know, it’s not exactly my genre of choice, given a general lack of romance and a whole shaker of spice. However, when I saw the title Murder by Cheesecake and then, more importantly, the subtitle A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery pop up in my ARC dashboard, I couldn’t resist. Many an rainy afternoon (I was only allowed to watch TV if precipitation required my fisherman-grade raincoat) was spent cuddled on the sofa, listening to the dulcet drawl of Blanche, the bad-ass sarcasm of Dorothy and Sofia, and the midwestern zaniness of Rose. On a grey and gloomy New England day, what tween wouldn’t want to escape to the sunny and, to me, foreign paradise of Miami, as seen through the eyes of a quartet of well-coiffed retirees. I obviously had to read this book. Golden girls + cheesecake + murder = a good time (obviously).

I’ll give it to the author, Rachel Ekstrom Courage, who clearly loves the ladies of her source material. The book is so authentic to the voice of each of its leading ladies that you can’t not read it without hearing Blanche’s purr, Dorothy’s gravitas, Sofia’s Sicilian curses, and Rose’s, well, Rose-ness. It’s the latter that Courage pins her tale upon, as Rose’s beloved cousin / niece (it’s a thing), Nettie, is unable to get married in St. Olaf (for all the herring-y wackiness that entails, as you can imagine) and is now getting married - at Rose’s behest lest she has to endure an elopement - in her fiance’s hometown, Miami. We’ve thus got a real fish out of water situation (all piscine puns intended), as the uptight and elderly St. Olaf’s contingency clashes with Jason’s hotel-owning, Miami-elite parents. And we, of course, benefit, courtesy of the fact that the happy couple must uphold all of the obscure Norwegian traditions - most of which feature pickled fish - in order to access Nettie’s trust.

Speaking of trust, our fab four find a crack in theirs for one another when Rose, upon removing her hundred homemade cheesecakes from the industrial freezer of Jason’s parents hotel, stumbles upon a dead body. On the first night of a week’s worth of already questionable St. Olaf-themed mandatory celebrations, but of course. Things quickly go from bad to worse when the corpse is ID’d by Dorothy as the man whom she’d really clicked with - from a VHS dating service video - before being unceremoniously dumped by him halfway through their first date. As though Dorothy’s ego hadn’t suffered enough after finally putting herself back out there, her freedom takes a beating too, as she becomes the police’s prime suspect, as her date, as it turns out, has a checkered history of conning women out of their savings. Since both the St. Olaf relatives and the Miami hoteliers now both blame Rose for putting the nuptials in jeopardy, she, bless her naive little heart, needs an outlet for her own frustration and turns on Dorothy.

Collective gasps aside, the rest of the story follows our favorite almost-sestegenarions (seriously, these women, save Sofia, were in their early-to-mid 50s! I’m just going to pause, and maybe have a stiff drink, at the fact that I’m apparently close enough in age to retire to Miami. Shady Pines, here I come!) as they work to both salvage the wedding AND clear Dorothy Zbornak’s good, albeit hard-to-pronounce, name. The latter requires some reconnaissance work that is not limited to: Dorothy being disguised as a “lady of the night”, Sofia’s hiring of a stripper clown for Nettie’s bachelorette, and Rose and Blanche doing their best Miami Vice impression as they shake down patrons at one of Miami’s gay bars. Couple this cozy silliness with 80s references for days (Aquanet! Love’s Baby Soft! Stetson cologne!) and one red herring after another - soft-hearted Rose is the one who comes to the stark realization that anyone (even a St. Olafian) could be the murderer - and you’ve got exactly what you hoped you would when gazed upon the delightfully-designed cover: devoted friendship, a mystery that’s just twisty-and-turny enough to make you, like the title ladies themselves, keep a notebook of suspects, and retro nostalgia. 

So even it’s not my usual cup of (chamomile) tea, I’m more than happy to have spent the better part of my sunny spring weekend (I threw on an extra layer and read outside, so my mom would be proud) with the Golden Girls on their inaugural murder mystery and am looking forward to the next, since you know Blanche’s already got a body count, of sorts, on her perfectly manicured hands. In the interim, thank you, Rachel Ekstrom Courage, for being a friend of the show and a pretty entertaining writer to boot.

Rating: 4 / 5 Pickled Herring Balls