A Catered Birthday Party

By Isis Crawford

A Little Taste of Heaven catering certainly knows how to feed people. Dogs, however..? When sisters Bernie and Libby sign on to cater Trudy the Pug's birthday bash, it isn't just any doggie 'do. Trudy's owner, Annabel Colbert, is one of the richest women in town--and as mascot of the Colbert toy company, Trudy herself is a bona fide celebrity. But when the big day arrives, mere moments after dipping into the wine, Annabel is shrieking she's been poisoned--and falling face first into her soup. After two days in a coma, Annabel is dead.

It seems the woman who had everything also had her share of enemies. In fact, Annabel was cheating, blackmailing, or backstabbing most everyone she knew--including Trudy's trainer and kennel owner. With so many suspects, sniffing out the truth is a risky proposition. Bernie and Libby had better close the oven on this case fast--before they get burned. . .

"Fans of Diane Mott Davidson and Joanne Fluke will enjoy the investigative and culinary antics of the nosey sisters." –Library Journal

"Enjoyable and entertaining." –Romantic Times

"Diverting. . .gabby. . ." –Publishers Weekly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780758261823

Isis Crawford

Isis Crawford was born in Egypt to parents who were in the diplomatic corps. When she was five, her family returned to the States, where her mother opened a restaurant in Upper Westchester County and her father became a university professor. Since then Isis has combined her parents’ love of food and travel by running a catering service as well as penning numerous travel-related articles about places ranging from Omsk to Paraguay.

Reviews for A Catered Birthday Party

[delphimo_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story involves a catered birthday party for a dog, Trudy. Of course, the owner of Trudy drinks a special wine and then states that she has been poisoned. The police do not see murder, just a heart attack. Libby and Bernie promise the dying Annabel that they will find the murderer. In this caper, Sean Simmons, father of Libby and Bernie, leads the investigation and discovers the killer. I especially liked same of the new characters: Samantha and Trudy. Crawford likes to show that anger and hate can simmer for years, before an action is taken. Again, I like Crawford's writing better than Joanne Fluke's writing, but has better recipes.

[jenniferrobb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A friend sent me this book in a box of books. I believe I've read one other book by this author, but I didn't remember the sisters being so annoying. The bickering, the nosiness, the catty remarks, and other things made me not like them very much, which is a bad thing when they are the two main characters for the book. (I liked their father, Sean, better. And I'm not sure if the bickering is a normal thing between them because Sean thought about it a time or two and wondered why it was happening.)Although this book says "a mystery with recipes" on the cover, it appears that someone (not my friend) tore out the recipes--well, I'm assuming they were at the end of the book and there appears to be pages torn out from there--prior to us getting it. So there were no recipes. Not that most recipes that appear in these books are ones I plan to try anyway, but . . .Like other reviewers mentioned, I did have trouble keeping all the characters straight. In fact, toward the end, when they discussed that Missy became Anna, I had no idea who Anna was or what she did in the story. Combine that with other characters named Annabel and Joanna and well, . . .just too many similar names and not enough characterization to each character to really keep them all straight (for me anyway).I felt bad for Trudy (the pug). No one in the story really seemed to care for her except Samantha and maybe Melissa (and maybe Ines too). I think most of the other characters saw Trudy as a means to an end (a business empire, a way to make money, a way into the big leagues, etc.) Poor doggie. I didn't guess the killer until it was revealed, but I'm also not sure I tried too hard to figure it out since I struggled with "wanting" to continue reading because I didn't really connect with any characters enough to care about what happened.