This book is a collection with a story by each of the three authors. My assumption when I started Fruitcake by Jane Rubino was that they were three novellas relatively equal in length. I kept thinking, "this is way too much background info. and extraneous information for a novella!" The first story ended up being a full length novel (317 pages), so I suppose all there was room for all that information. I don't know if it's because I was expecting something different and disliked the beginning, but I never really got into the story and loved it. It felt unreal and a little pointless. I had a hard time liking the main character, Cat, a 40-something widow with two kids who works as a freelance journalist and comes from a family of cops. She seemed over-sensitive, obsessed with quoting authors and correcting grammar, and I just couldn't relate to her.
The second story in the book, Milwaukee Winters Can be Murder, is by Kathleen Anne Barrett and is a quick, amusing read. It's predictable and you'll know the murderer pretty early, but I didn't mind that in this case. I am actually interested to read a novel featuring this debut character.
A Perfect Time for Murder is a short story by Fred Hunter and ends the collection. I didn't love it, but it was all right. It was immediately clear where the story was going, which was a little disappointing. I like a clever twist in my short stories (That's why O'Henry is the master of the genre!), and this story didn't have one.
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