THE MAIN CORPSE

Goldy Schulz, owner of Goldilocks' Catering in Aspen Meadows, Colorado, and surely the ditziest of the current crop of culinary busybodies (Killer Pancake, 1995, etc.), crashes over the top in this latest from Davidson. Goldy's best friend Mafia Korman, once married to Goldy's ex and now rich but plagued by cardiac problems, is in love with suave Tony Royce, partner with Albert Lipscomb in Prospect Financial Partners, a very hot investment firm—a firm promoting the long-closed Eurydice gold mine in the mountains nearby, their optimistic claims backed by positive ore assays. The company's chief investment officer Victoria Lear, attempting a firsthand look in her Land Cruiser, has died in what the police are calling an accident on the treacherous canyon road. Now, at a party that Goldy is catering for prospective investors, Maria is trumpeting doubts about the integrity of the assay reports. The next day Albert Lipscomb disappears, along with a few mil from the company's assets. But that's just the beginning, as Goldy's policeman husband Tom is taken off the case by detested superior Captain Shockley, a Prospect investor, and Tony Royce vanishes, Maria accused of killing him. With help from her son Arch, his bloodhound Jake, and more spectacularly, from Marla's hated brother-in-law General Bo Farquhar, released from his paramilitary compound, Goldy proceeds, through rockslides, downpours, explosions, and the like, to wrap up the case. Totally unbelievable and infrequently entertaining, except perhaps to backpackers and mountaineering mavens. The recipes, however, do sound intriguing.