J.B. Stanley Carbs and Cadavers

Carbs and Cadavers

J.B. Stanley

Midnight Ink, Sept 2006, $12.95, 255 pp.

ISBN 0738709131

Professor James Henry is not having a good year. First, his wife divorces him after a three year separation to marry a rich lawyer, then his mother dies of a heart attack. He has to quit teaching at William and Mary University to move back to his hometown to take care of his reclusive and belligerent father and the only job he can find is that of a librarian. He also is over fifty pounds overweight. So when the opportunity arrives to join a diet supper club, he leaps at the chance, hoping to meet new friends.

When the body of a former high school football hero and local bully is found murdered in the local bakery, Lucy Hanover wants to investigate the case because she yearns to be a deputy so she convinces the other members of the supper clan to help her find the killer. They question various people when they are not meeting to discuss diets and the group learns that the victim was blackmailing his former classmates. James with the help of the other four members of the group, think he knows who the killer is but when they go to confront the suspect, they find themselves at the mercy of a stone cold killer.

Between the investigation and the dieting, the "Flab Five" as they call themselves develop a camaraderie that develops into a friendship. James is happy because he now has friends and a social life and learns how to be part of a group and at times their leader. J.B. Stanley has written a clever and exciting amateur sleuth mystery that has many suspects with realistic motives that lead to readers eagerly awaiting the next supper club mystery because the first book in the series is delicious.

Harriet Klausner