Widow Rose Kaplan, resident of the Julius and Rebecca
Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors, prides herself on making
the best maztoh balls. Each year for Passover, the Home
has a contest for the best Matzoh balls, and again Mrs.
Kaplan wins. As everyone is starting their Passover Seder
-- supper -- suddenly a commotion occurs, people are
shouting: a server has knocked over plates and spilled
soup on a table. Everything quiets down, but suddenly
someone notices that Bertha Finkelstein, who was sitting
alone, has her face in her soup bowl. And she is
unfortunately quite dead.
Two detectives arrive, one looking like Lieutenant
Columbo, the other like Detective Chief Inspector
Dalgleish, and they inform the distraught residents that
the unfortunate Mrs. Finkelstein choked on a diamond
earring, which belonged to elder fashionista Daisy
Goldfarb. Mrs. Goldfarb had earlier on that day reported
her earrings missing. Mrs. Finkelstein's untimely demise
appears a bit too closely linked with Mrs. Kaplan's soup;
Rose finds herself a bit too high on the list of suspects
and she decides to look into the matter herself with the
help of her long-time friend, Ida Berkowitz, to whom we
owe the retelling of this dreadful incident.
MRS. KAPLAN AND THE MATZOH BALL OF DEATH is exactly what
I hoped it would be: a cozy murder mystery and the Jewish
humour I love; I knew I was going to love it from the
very first page. The story is ingenious, extremely
entertaining, and the ending surprisingly quite
unpredictable. The characters -- even the minor ones --
are
colourful, fun, and absolutely genuine: we've all known
someone like at least one of them. I particularly enjoyed
that the narrator is Mrs. Berkowitz; she is Watson to her
friend's Sherlock, and the voice is perfect. It's also
extremely well-written and the characters speak and act
like people their age, in a realistic way. There are
several very amusing passages, and the section that leads
to the conclusion is totally hilarious!
MRS. KAPLAN AND THE MATZOH BALL OF DEATH was a most
pleasant discovery for me and I'm very much looking
forward to further adventures of the delightful Mrs.
Kaplan and her cohort Mrs. Berkowitz!
Move over, Miss Marple—Mark Reutlinger’s charming cozy
debut introduces readers to the unforgettable amateur sleuth
Rose Kaplan and her loyal sidekick, Ida.
Everyone knows that Rose Kaplan makes the best matzoh ball
soup around—she’s a regular matzoh ball maven—so it’s no
surprise at the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish
Seniors when, once again, Mrs. K wins the honor of preparing
the beloved dish for the Home’s seder on the first night of
Passover.
But when Bertha Finkelstein is
discovered facedown in her bowl of soup, her death puts a
bit of a pall on the rest of the seder. And things go really
meshugge when it comes out that Bertha choked on a diamond
earring earlier stolen from resident Daisy Goldfarb.
Suddenly Mrs. K is the prime suspect in the police
investigation of both theft and murder. Oy
vey—it’s a recipe for disaster, unless Rose and her dear
friend Ida can summon up the chutzpah to face down the
police and solve the mystery themselves.
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