Tara S. (tsmith25) reviewed on 7/22/2006 + 156 more book reviews

Do you remember where you were the night the last original episode of M*A*S*H aired? Ellie Bernstein does. She was trying to settle her overweight tuckus on a barstool at Charley Aaronson's Dew Drop Inn, which was host to a raucous M*A*S*H bash, complete with drunken look-alike Klingers and Hawkeyes bidding their favorite television show farewell with a drink (or five, or ten). Ellie, distraught over her husband's blatant infidelity, uses the show as her balm, trying to avoid yet another inevitable cheesecake binge. At the time she believes herself the most unfortunate person in the room, but that title eventually goes to a woman dressed as "Hot Lips" Houlihan, found dead in the bar's parking lot. Cut to the present, and Ellie, fresh from her amateur sleuthing in Denise Deitz's Throw Darts at a Cheesecake, is eleven years older, fifty-five pounds lighter, and less one husband. In Beat Up A Cookie, the Weight Winners counselor supports other women in the quest to lose weight while her current paramour, detective Peter Miller, dodges Ellie's interest in his work (which has replaced her appetite for sweets). With her imaginary Sherlock cap, Ellie, quietly speculates as to which one is a serial killer, with crimes possibly stretching back to that fateful night when a young woman in a bar parking lot also bade "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen." For Ellie, though, the task is not easy: the only common thread among the victims is their resemblences to show characters, and everyone she suspects seems to have motive and opportunity; that is, considering Ellie's wild imagination and her overactive paranoia when her son mentions casually that Ellie could pass for "Hot Lips" herself! For Ellie, it's important to find the killer before she, like M*A*S*H, is cancelled. ~Reviewer: Kathryn Lively

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