Kalikoff, Beth, (Dying For A Blue Plate Special [hc, Five Star, 2005]) 978-1594142970 [New Jersey expatriate Jewel Feynmann finds herself up to her kugel in aggro when her fledgling business, Blue Plate Catering in Tacoma, WA, does dinner for Commencement Bay University, aka Zoo U. Keeping dreamy employee Del Troutman and runaway student waiters in line is hard enough. Then Zoo U Dean Matthew Mulcahy dies of poison at Blue Plate’s dinner while hundreds of poorly dressed academics watch in horror. Chocolate-eyed homicide detective Ben Hartsock works the case in a quiet, capable, good-looking way - damn good-looking, not that Jewel cares - but too methodically for her East coast taste. Everyone from the Brown and Hailey candy factory to the Museum of Glass will think Blue Plate killed Mulcahy unless Jewel finds out who did. And yesterday. Jewel dives in among the college people, including foul-mouthed playwright Leo Wallinsky; puppy-like Ace Birney, fraternity boy; and watchful Helena Moore, in charge of student grievances and a lot more. Del pitches in. Together, they find out enough about Mulcahy and his women students to gag a mule. Detective Hartsock’s official investigation gets close enough to lift Jewel’s pulse to code red. Surely it’s unethical for a cop to have sex with a suspect? When Jewel’s e-mail box fills with death threats and Courtney Mitznick cancels her son’s Bar Mitzvah buffet supper, Jewel really gets angry. Hair flying, she finally finds the answer with the murderer in Blue Plate’s deserted kitchen, late at night. Maybe too late. – Amazon]
United States · Fiction author
Beth Kalikoff
Beth Kalikoff (born est. 1954-55 in New York City and resides in the Seattle area) [She built a distinguished career combining creative writing, Victorian literary scholarship, and higher education leadership. She completed her B.A. in English and Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in English and Rhetoric from Indiana University Bloomington in 1983. After holding early teaching positions at Eastern Illinois University and the University of Puget Sound, she joined the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT) faculty in 1998. At UWT, she became a champion for student literacy, founding and directing the campus’s very first campus-wide Writing Center. Her expertise in pedagogical innovation led her to the main University of Washington campus in Seattle, where she served as the Founding Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning from 2010 until her retirement in 2021. In this role, she spearheaded university-wide programs focusing on inclusive teaching, educational equity, and digital learning advancements. As a writer, her diverse publications span academic books on 19th-century crime culture (Murder and Moral Decay in Victorian Popular Literature), educational research on learning communities, personal essays, poetry, and her 2011 cozy Jewish mystery novel, Dying for a Blue Plate Special. -Google/AI]