Strangle a Loaf of Italian Bread
By Denise Dietz
Five Star, $25.95
ISBN: 978-1-59414-760-9

There are several memorable portraits of female characters in this newest entry by Denise Dietz in the Ellie Bernstein/Lt. Peter Miller mystery series. The first, of course, is Ellie herself, now 41 years old and divorced, and after eleven months closer to matrimony with her cop boyfriend, Peter Miller. The second is Sarah Leibowitz, now known to one and all as Sara Lee - the old advertising jingle "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee" kept playing in my head, because that obviously doesn't apply to this Sara Lee, as she is strangled one night with her waitress uniform necktie, her body found in the alley behind the restaurant where she worked. It would appear that the list of those who didn't like Sara Lee is not a short one. The case is assigned to Lt. Miller, and Ellie does her usual thing of conducting her own investigation. [She reasons that she has been solving fictitious mysteries her whole life, so why not?] They both have even more to engage them when another body is found.

Complicating Ellie's quest to find the killer is her temporary dog-sitting job, taken on as a favor to one of her diet-club members, Rachel Lester, ostensibly visiting an ostensibly ill sister in Houston, but who is actually taking a breather from her marriage to a cheating husband in a Pike's Peak cabin not that far from Colorado Springs, where Ellie et al reside.

Animals abound in the book, from Ellie's black Persian cat, Jackie Robinson; Rachel's border collie; a fictional menagerie of seven cats, named for the days of the week; Ellie's mother's six cats, charmingly named Danielle Steele, Victoria Gordon, Nora Roberts, Lorna Ann Jakes, Maggie Osborne and Marty Blue, most of which names should be familiar to readers of the present novel. 'Charming' is one of the best ways to describe the entire novel, which presents an interesting plot, characters and dialogue instantly recognizable, and word coinage which took me aback at first, e.g., "torridity" and "causticity," but which grew on me as the book went on - they may be actual words, for all I know..

Food figures prominently in the book. The narrative is lightly sprinkled with recipes, and many of the characters are of the weight-conscious variety, as might be expected in a series where the female protagonist is the head of a local Weight Winners diet club. [The title is derived from a line by the late Gilda Radner, a worthy muse: "Eating is self-punishment, punish the food instead. Strangle a loaf of Italian bread . . ."] Ya gotta love it.

Review by GLORIA FEIT

©2009 Lorie Ham. All rights reserved.