Jacklyn Brady - Arsenic and Old Cake (2012)

The premise behind Brady's 'Piece of Cake' mysteries is interesting, but the books themselves are without soul. They're the narration of someone dying, but you feel nothing. Honestly, they're stiffer than the corpse!

The story is Rita, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of victim #1, takes over his up-market bakery. They make cakes worth thousands of dollars for the elite and wealthy in New Orleans. So Rita has troubles with the staff, she falls over murders, insists on solving murders and is seeing two men but cannot decide between them. The basis of most mystery novels, right? But, in this novel, it's all 2D. I feel nothing for Rita or any of the characters. I thought that maybe it was just Brady's first book that was overly wooden, first books often are. So I kept reading, but this is book three and I should be feeling something for the cast of bakers by now - I'm not.

Everyone's problems are so textbook. Their reactions to things are pedestrian. "There's been a murder? Ohno, what in my house! *shrug* Now, who'd like a piece of cake?" It's like the author cannot write emotions. If the cast don't feel it, how am I going to feel it?

This is a mundane effort from Berkley's Prime Crime theme-based mysteries.