Rating: 
Summary: How Irritating Can One Book Be?
Review: I began this book on a recommendation by a friend. I still consider her my friend, but the book struck me as so contrived and poorly written that I had to stop reading after a few chapters. There is no character development, and the author is simply trying too hard to be funny. Her attempts at humor fall absolutely flat. The main character alternates her speech between whispered grimaces and screaming. One dimensional people walk in and out of the scenes, but for what purpose? I didn't find the author delightfully funny; the book is not amusing--nor was it worth my time.If you like detective humor mixed with cooking and recipes, I suggest any book written by Diana Mott Davidson. If you're looking for even funnier detective humor, try Janet Evanovich's series featuring Stephanie Plum. These two authors may have been the inspiration for "Crepes of Wrath" and other books by the author, but Tamar Myers falls far short of Davidson and Evanovich. I'm surprised that there is any sort of following for these books! For readers looking for a more serious crime maven, I suggest Nevada Barr's books featuring Anna Pigeon. Wake up folks! There are some REALLY good authors out there to be discovered!
Rating: 
Summary: Edited Better than Previous
Review: I have two main complaints with this series. One is that the books need to be edited since there are usually quite a few mistakes. The other is that Magdalena's stories and sayings get very repetitive after awhile. I'm glad to say that this book seems to have addressed my first complaint a bit. There are not so many glaring editorial mistakes. Unfortunately, not so for the second complaint. It is still repetitive, but Ms. Myers does introduce some new sayings, and does not dwell so much on Magdalena's stories. In this book one of the only "bad" Amish cooks in the world dies from an overdose of "angel dust". Now how did a religious, simple person like Lizzie Mast ingest a recreational drug? Magdalena is deputized by her nemesis Melvin to find out. As usual she unmasks the killer with some risk to herself, but before she does that she discovers that recreational drugs are not so unheard-of in the young Amish community. I enjoyed this book much more than I have the other most recent additions to the series. And Magdalena is still funny.
Rating: 
Summary: A hilariously funny cosy
Review: In Hernia, Pennsylvania, lives large Amish and Mennonite populations with tourists from around the world converging on the small area. Most visitors stay at the Penn-Dutch Inn run by Magdalena Yoder, a keen businessperson who has managed to turn a failing farm into a profit making enterprise. Magdalena has also an uncanny ability to solve homicide cases. Her brother-in-law, the local police chief, asks Magdalena to help him solve the murder of Lizzie Mast, a devout Mennonite married to a Viet Nam veteran. Lizzie died from an overdose of Angel Dust. Apparently, just before she died, Lizzie received a threatening note that the postmaster saw. However, a hit and run driver deliberately kills the postmaster. Magdalena learns that some local teens are experimenting with illegal drugs and concludes that their supplier provided the Angel Dust to Lizzie. Magdalena must identify the seller in order to stop more deaths form occurring. Every book that Tamar Myers writes in her wonderful "Pennsylvania Dutch with recipes" series contains much humor and insight. However, the current tale, THE CREPES OF WRATH, is just plain funny while providing even more understanding of the communities than the strong previous entries. The witty repartees and double entendres allow readers to feel good even while murder and drugs serve as the focus of the mystery. The characters are likable while the mystery is well drawn and executed. On a scale from one to five, this regional amateur sleuth novel is a ten. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: ANOTHER PUNNY PENN-DUTCH TREAT
Review: Its back to Amish country and Magdalena Yoder's PennDutch Inn. This is the ninth book in Myers' series, and while I still enjoy reading the books I do wish Magdalena would come up with a few new colloquial expressions for her repertory. Right now the books are starting to seem one expressions shy of originality. But I still enjoy reading them. Magdalena has been very successful in turning her family farmhouse into a fashionable fantasy for the rich and famous who enjoy paying outrageous amounts to experience the genuine Amish lifestyle (or Magdalena's version of it) for themselves. Anyway, Magdalena is a magnet for murder, and this time around the victim is Lizzie Mast, the world's worst cook. It seems like someone has done her in with a drug overdose, which is hardly the Amish thing to do. Magdalena is called in to bumble her way through the facts and resolve the murder. Along the way she has to put up with rambunctious Amish teens, drug dealers and the wacky residents of her inn. The recipes in this book are really superficial to the plot since they really don't relate to the action of it anyway, and they didn't inspire me to give any of them a try. (They're also all from the same cookbook.) The book was a pleasant read, and like the other books in the series it gets my **** rating.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable visit to the PennDutch Inn.
Review: Magdalena Yoder is hysterically funny again in this, the 9th in the Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery with Recipes series. She kept me in stitches with her philosophy of life and her little diatribes on the residents of Hernia. In THE CREPES OF WRATH we are treated to more insights into the Amish way of life -- this time concerning the young people -- and we learn about the new man in Magdalena's life. Myers consistently creates solid books with a satisfying mystery, splendid characters, and a lot of warm laughter.
Rating:
Summary: Great fun
Review: Sometimes we forget that a book of fiction is primarily to entertain the reader, to cause the reader to forget for a while his or her "otherwise drab and wretched life." I borrow that phrase without shame from Tom Lehrer. This book is certainly an entertainment. The plot isn't all that much, I'll admit. Otherwise, I'd have given it five stars. However, I am just enthralled with Magdalena Portulacca Yoder, the skinny, middle-aged Mennonite innkeeper who runs around Hernia, Pennsylvania, with a small kitty asleep in her bra. If you haven't read the book, you won't believe that or understand it at all. Trust me, she does. And when that kitty is awakened suddenly, well.... The Amish and Mennonite neighbors (along with the "English" inn guests and neighbors) are also memorable--quirky but surely alive. The town itself and the country inn provide a fine atmosphere, one I would like to visit. My only reservation is the thinnish plot and a rather vague resolution, but at least we didn't get a confession and then a suicide. I will definitely read more books by Tamar Myers. Thank you. You made me laugh outloud, and I haven't done that with a novel since "The Confederacy of Dunces."
Rating:
Summary: Great fun
Review: Sometimes we forget that a book of fiction is primarily to entertain the reader, to cause the reader to forget for a while his or her "otherwise drab and wretched life." I borrow that phrase without shame from Tom Lehrer. This book is certainly an entertainment. The plot isn't all that much, I'll admit. Otherwise, I'd have given it five stars. However, I am just enthralled with Magdalena Portulacca Yoder, the skinny, middle-aged Mennonite innkeeper who runs around Hernia, Pennsylvania, with a small kitty asleep in her bra. If you haven't read the book, you won't believe that or understand it at all. Trust me, she does. And when that kitty is awakened suddenly, well.... The Amish and Mennonite neighbors (along with the "English" inn guests and neighbors) are also memorable--quirky but surely alive. The town itself and the country inn provide a fine atmosphere, one I would like to visit. My only reservation is the thinnish plot and a rather vague resolution, but at least we didn't get a confession and then a suicide. I will definitely read more books by Tamar Myers. Thank you. You made me laugh outloud, and I haven't done that with a novel since "The Confederacy of Dunces."
Rating:
Summary: Empty calories.
Review: Tamar Myers, The Crepes of Wrath (New American Library, 2001)
I hate to say it, but I've binged a little too much on Tamar Myers over the last eight months. Like consuming too many ice cream sundaes all at once, the feeling you get after finishing your last one is more uncomfortable nausea than pleasure. When you've read four or five PennDutch mysteries in a concentrated amount of time, all the wailing will eventually get to you.
To be fair, Magdalena does do a lot less wailing in this book, but replaces it with various other W-words. One wonders, idly, which letter of the alphabet Myers will be abusing next in Magdalena's quest to solve the various crimes too complex for her stupid brother-in-law, Chief of Police Melvin Stoltzfus, to get his head around. In this case, a teetotaling Amish woman has keeled over from an overdose of angel dust; too busy with his campaign to bother, Melvin asks Magdalena to take the case. Not that she doesn't have an innful of weirdos to deal with, as usual, and her tentative relatinship with a guy who's not only from out of town, but Jewish to boot. You can almost hear her mother rolling over in her grave. (Magdalena does, more than once, in the course of this novel).
Tamar Myers is getting more scurrilous as time goes on (there's rather a large number of double-entendres involving Magdalena's pet kitten Little Freni; methinks Myers has developed a perfectly reasonable fondness for the British sitcom Are You Being Served? In recent years), which is always a good thing, and the book's as readable as ever. Actually, I liked it better than the earlier PennDutch mysteries I've read; Myers is getting more of a sense of how to plot as time goes on, leading to less explanation-of-the-mystery at the end (here, there's only about half a page of "aha! This is how I knew you were the killer!"). But be warned, dear reader, an excess of empty calories can lead to a tender stomach. Take Magdalena in small doses. ***
Rating:
Summary: Hysterical stabs at humor.
Review: The plot was scarcely credible considering the main character, portrayed as unworldly and simple to the point of stupidity, actually solved a mystery. The hysterical stabs at humor, an aberration - decadence disguided as innocence - detracted from the whole and was offensive, especially from a writer purported to be of Amish roots, a claim evidently employed for "filthy lucre's sake" (Titus 1:11).
Rating:
Summary: The Crepes of Wrath
Review: Though it's the 9th book in her Penn-Dutch series, Ms. Myers does it again with yet another delightful page-turner. Frankly I didn't expect a 9th book to be as strong in plot or humor as the others, but I was happily surprised to find "Crepes..." every bit as good as the rest. Drugs come to Hernia (oh my!) and Melvin asks Magdalena's help in solving a murder as he runs his policital campaign. This book does not disappoint.
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