Remember those old political buttons and t shirts that said: What if our taxes went to schools and the bake sales had to be held for, say, the military industrial complex (a term famously used, remember, by Eisenhower). I think maybe it was planes that the bake sales were for, and education was funded fully, but hey. Who remembers? In any case, that has absolutely nothing to do with Leslie Meier's Bake Sale Murder which is a quick read cozy featuring an amateur detective type (actually a journalist for a newspaper called The Pennysaver) seeking a murder suspect. The same amateur, of course, who featured in a novella previously reviewed here with others collected in a book entitled Candy Cane Murder. Her name? Lucy Stone. (and no, as I noted in the previous review, no link to the Lucy Stone of historical significance around the women's movement.) This is Meier's 13th in her series featuring Stone and was published in 2006.
The book brings together some interesting themes, including tensions between a group of women who had been friends for years and newer, I assume younger, women who move into their area, into a new subdivision. The newer women have, in several cases "opted out" of the land of corporations to raise children, and show their fierce business acumen in a bake sale they organize. (In the end, the two groups get along, but the telling of the tale may seem familiar to some who have tried to reach across any divide among women. Not necessarily a pretty sight.) Also evident in the book are the generational consequences of violence, though there is a bit of a conservative thrust to the pejorative characterization of the 1960s. The foster care system comes in for a pretty negative portrayal, while journalism here appears not as corporate business but as local color. Set in the fictional town of Tinker's Cove, Maine, there is a tiny shade of Jessica Fletcher and Cabot Cove here.
And food? Well, there is the bake sale -- complete with debate over how to successfully raise money through a bake sale and the requisite jokes about very very tasty chocolate as over against more apparently healthy baked goods. The bake sale even includes home made dog biscuits, though the few recipes at the end of the book does not include these (ostensibly made with raw liver). While unimportant to the plot, the food is definitely front and center in some characters' minds.
Not great literature, but a great treat . . .
