Chain A Lamb Chop To The Bed

Bernstein/Miller Mystery #3

by Denise Dietz

Weight Winners, in Colorado Springs, is a support group for people who want to lose weight. Ellie Bernstein is its group leader. When Ellie's significant other, Peter Miller, a homicide detective with the C.S.P.D., invites her to vacation with him for one "stress-free" week at a dude ranch outside Aspen, she accepts with trepidation. She suffers from acrophobia and tends to avoid such sports as sky diving, skiing, bungee jumping, and horseback riding. Just before Peter and Ellie leave for Aspen, an elderly man is killed in his home. What makes the crime unique is that the face on the victim's advertised, for-sale painting was slashed with a knife. What makes the crime even more unique is that the woman with the slashed face is a dead ringer for Ellie. Ellie, who feels she gets along with just about anybody, quickly makes four the ranch manager, Duke Dombroski, who has a John Wayne fetish; the riding instructor, Kit Halliday, who wears a size three and has a crush on Peter; the plump cook, Rosa Hamilton, who loathes Ellie for no apparent reason; and a fat white horse named Buttermilk. A dead body found near the ranch's ravine would ordinarily jump-start Ellie's sleuthing skills. Only this time she's in unfamiliar territory. She's never been to Aspen before; she knew and adored the victim - a world-renowned Aspen artist - and, to make matters worse, the wife who jump-started his career seems to be missing. Nevertheless, Ellie desperately needs to find the "art patron" who murdered her friend, and she needs to make friends with a black stallion named Satan . . . before the weight loss she's achieved becomes permanent in a way she's never imagined. Denise Dietz is the bestselling author of several novels, including Eye of Newt. She lives on Vancouver Island with her husband, novelist Gordon Aalborg, and her mostly Norwegian Elkhound, Pandora.

389 pages, Hardcover

First published November 22, 2005

About the author

When Denise [Deni] Dietz was in the third grade, she wrote her first story, The Pencil Who Grew Up to Be a Stub. Although the assignment was to write a one-page story, using an ink pen, Deni wrote a five-page story, first-person...and she used a pencil (the narrator of her story). Whereupon, she received a failing grade for not following orders. Like Hitchcock the Dog in Footprints in the Butter, Deni doesn't follow orders unless they make sense.

Years later, after Deni had enjoyed a short-lived singing career and acting career, she sat at her typewriter, flexed her fingers, and pounded out her first culinary mystery: Throw Darts at a Chessecake, inspired by her part-time job as a Weight Watchers lecturer. In Cheesecake diet club members are getting killed off at goal weight and eating as if their lives depended on it. Switching to a computer, Deni hit the bestseller list with Footprints in the Butter - an Ingrid Beaumont Mystery co-starring Hitchcock the Dog. She followed that success with her stand-alone, Fifty Cents for Your Soul, her "reluctant witch mystery," Eye of Newt and three more diet club mysteries.

Married to Aussie/Canadian author, Gordon Aalborg (AKA Victoria Gordon), whom she met on-line through a writers loop, Deni moved to Vancouver Island, where she is owned by a chocolate Lab named Magic.

Reviews

[Gus · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't read. It's was in my queue from a long time ago so I thought what the hay. Too many other books to read to spend time reading a book you can tell isn't well-written from the first few pages.

[Kelly]

Did not finish. Lost interest.