The Death of Pie

The Death of Pie
A Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery with Recipes
Tamar Myers
Severn House
Sutton, Surrey, England
ISBN: 9780727883810
Hardback
$ 27.95
200 pages


The small Amish-Mennonite village of Hernia, Pennsylvania is a traditional village. Families have resided here for generations and sometimes have difficulty finding a distant enough cousin to marry. The community welcomes outsiders but prefers their old ways.

Ms. Ramat Sreym visited the small community and was fascinated by getting to know the people. She used this information to write a best-selling novel. However most of the residents of the community were not pleased with how each of them was portrayed in this novel. A bit of truth can be vicious gossip.

While staying in Hernia, Ramat stayed at a local bed-and-breakfast, The Penn Dutch Inn owned and run by Magdalena Yoder. Unfortunately during Ramat's stay, she didn't become close friends with the owner but did succeed at making enemies of most of the community once her book was published.

Being that now the author is considered to be a celebrity, Ramat was honored to be a guest judge at annual 110th Annual Festival of Pies. The pies for this event are outstanding being made with the natural foods, lard, salt and longtime family.

Ramat takes a bite of Magdalena's pie. She falls directly into it as she dies. It was poisoned.

So who is the likely suspect?

Besides Magdalena Yoder running the bed-and-breakfast in this Amish-Mennonite community, she is a wife to her Jewish husband who is a respected cardiologist and mother to a young son and adopted teen-aged daughter. Besides that she is the town mayor and the one in town responsible for financing the needs of the community including law enforcement.

How does anyone investigate the person paying their salary?

The new Chief of Police, Toy Graham realized that it was his responsibility to discover who had poisoned the glamorous author. Being that Toy quickly realized this conflict of interest since Magdalena paid Toy's salary and had paid for his police car, he wisely requested Magdalena to find the murderer. After all, he believed that she was the murderer.

The Death of Pie is a fun-to-read cozy mystery whose story is told from Magdalena's sarcastic but realistic point-of-view. As the investigation meets dead-ends and searches for new leads, the reader is with Magdalena as she questions each possible suspect. To further complicate issues, Magdalena is related to the suspects and also realizes that she is the most likely to have poisoned Ramat. It was her pie even if she had not actually baked it.

Tamar Myers writes from her Amish/Mennonite heritage and has written and published numerous novels and short stories many with her protagonist Magdalena Yoder. Myers was born in the Belgian Congo where her parents were American-Mennonite missionaries.

The Death of Pie is a delightful fun novel to read as are all the books by Tamar Myers.