Murder by Cheesecake
A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery
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Murder by Cheesecake
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Narrated by:
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Yvonne Newman
About this listen
The first novel in the all-new Golden Girls Cozy Mystery series!
When Dorothy’s obnoxious date is found dead in a hotel freezer, it not only ruins a gorgeous cheesecake but threatens the elaborate St. Olaf-themed wedding Rose is hosting.
Things are heating up, and not just because of Blanche’s hot flashes. Rose’s cousin is eloping to Miami, and Rose is playing host. If she can't balance the groom’s family’s snobbery against the traditional St. Olaf wedding week guidelines, her hometown may never accept her cousin again!
Dorothy quickly realizes she needs a date with whom she can exchange wedding-related wisecracks. Turning to a newfangled VHS dating service, she believes she’s found the ideal conversationalist. Unfortunately, what looks good on TV can actually be a total jerk in real life. It seems she’ll just have to enjoy the company of Sophia, Blanche, and whomever Blanche has targeted for a hookup.
As the girls all pitch in, Rose is thrilled that the tea-and-fish-themed kickoff event is perfect, not a herring out of place. That is until Dorothy’s date is found dead—face-planted in an otherwise scrumptious-looking cheesecake. With every guest a suspect (especially Dorothy) and a marriage on the line, the four besties must ID the real killer, get the should-be-happy couple down the aisle, and make sure nobody from St. Olaf gets lost in the wilds of Miami. It’s up to the Golden Girls to sleuth out a way for friendship and love to win the day!
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Editorial Review
What listeners say about Murder by Cheesecake
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- John frost
- 19-04-25
a cheesy fun who done it
a very fun story and a great listen great for fans of all things golden girls
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- markfromlodz
- 27-04-25
A poor cosy mystery and a worse GG episode
I consider myself to be a Golden Girls fan, but that comes with a caveat. I liked the early series. After series 2, it begins to gradually go downhill, and I find the later series almost unwatchable. The style is different, the humour is different, and the new writers didn’t seem to know the characters. The characters don’t behave true to themselves. Blanche, in particular, becomes very one-dimensional.
And then there’s this book, which chronologically takes place in the early series but stylistically it would be an episode of series 8, had it ever been made. The writer, Rachel Ekstrom Courage, seems to know nothing about the characters, and this is made all the more apparent by Yvonna Newman’s poor performance as the narrator. For example, Sophia doesn’t once call Dorothy “Pussycat” and she has the absolute worst “Picture it, Sicily” story ever. Rachel Ekstrom Courage obviously felt she had to get in one of those stories without appreciating what the stories actually mean. Meanwhile, Rose in the TV series is an innocent. She’s naïve. But the author doesn’t understand that. She hones in on the dumb aspect.
And the main problem with this book is that the story focuses on Rose. Thus, we are treated to an inordinate number of silly St Olaf stories and traditions. In any normal episode, we would hear one or two of these things, but this book is saturated with them, and they quickly lose their charm and their humour. The writer manages to shoehorn in the one about St Sigmund’s day but then creates a whole catalogue of sayings and traditions all of her own. And they’re not good. Not good at all.
The plot is that Rose’s cousin/niece is getting married and has, of course, decided to have the wedding in Miami. Rose’s fiancé’s family live in Miami and they soon commandeer the whole wedding, to the exclusion of all the bride’s family. It’s utterly ridiculous and unbelievable.
Into this mix, Dorothy goes on a date with someone she meets through a video dating service. The date goes badly, he leaves without saying goodbye, and then he turns up dead in the hotel where all the guests from St Olaf are staying.
It takes hours to get to this point, I should point out.
In the beginning few chapters there are a few moments that raise a smile, but all attempts at humour are abandoned as Rose continues to make plans for the wedding. Eventually, the girls decide it’s up to them to solve the murder (after a few more hours) and so they go about doing a bit of detecting. But it’s all very poorly handled and doesn’t have any of the hallmarks of a cosy murder mystery.
The murder and the wedding are both competing for space in the story and both end up losing. The wedding preparations are so bizarre as to not be amusing, and the murder is so poorly handled because you never for one minute believe that Dorothy will be convicted.
All of this is made worse by the narrator. She seems to attempt to do impressions of the Golden Girls but she fails miserably. It’s tempting to say that Dorothy is the worst of the bunch, because she truly is awful. She sounds more masculine than the male characters. However, Blanche is equally bad. The narrator does a “vague Southern accent”, but it doesn’t have any of the warmth of the Blanche that we know from the TV show. Sophia is perhaps barely passable. Rose sounds like the narrator. I can’t say she even tried to do anything for Rose.
But then there are the other characters. To say that Yvonne Newman has no talent for accents is an understatement. Gustav is the worse by far but the others are all terrible.
And it's a minor niggle, but it must be mentioned -- she doesn't pronounce "Olaf" they way any of them did in the show. Poor research by the narrator.
Finally, there are problems with poor research by the author. Rachel Ekstrom Courage describes the famous art deco hotels as existing in North Beach, when they in fact are in South Beach. Collins Avenue sounds like it’s a mere minute or two away from Little Havana while it’s closer to half an hour --- of course, depending on whether you’re in North Beach or actually in South Beach. She throws in little asides that are supposed to make us smile, like talking about the invention of pool noodles. But they don’t work. I found myself sighing a lot while listening to this book as there are so many implausible things or characters acting against type.
There is very little, if anything, to like about this book. As a cosy mystery, it doesn’t work. As a Golden Girls episode, it doesn’t work. The narrator is poor and the research was non-existent. The resolution to the murder is deeply unsatisfying and that’s a cardinal sin in cosy mysteries.
Would I buy another book written by Rachel Ekstrom Courage? No.
Would I buy another book in this series? Perhaps, if written by someone else.
Would I buy another audiobook narrated by Yvonne Newman? No. She is very poor.
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