Synopsis

Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death is a humorous cozy mystery set in a Jewish retirement home. Rose Kaplan has won the right to prepare the matzoh ball soup for the annual Passover seder. Ordinarily, this would be a great honor; but as lamented by her friend Ida, who narrates the story in her old world dialect, this year “the devil should have such an honor!”

At the seder, Bertha Finkelstein is discovered dead, face down in her soup bowl. It turns out Bertha choked on an earring, reported stolen earlier that day by fellow resident Daisy Goldfarb, which somehow had found its way into the soup. Suspicion of theft and possibly murder, therefore, falls on Mrs. Kaplan, the only one who prepared the soup. Knowing she is innocent, Mrs. Kaplan and her friend Ida determine to find the real culprit.

They first make a list of possible suspects, whoever had both a motive and an opportunity to kill Bertha. It turns out there are several. They also use various means (some quite unconventional, including engaging the services of a lady burglar) to find out whether their suspects had police records and to search their rooms for the missing second earring. They learn, among other things, that Bertha suffered from kleptomania, and that only one earring was taken: the second earring is still in Daisy’s possession. (Daisy was attempting to defraud the insurance company by claiming both were stolen.)

Not only do the ladies’ investigations lead them to the solution to the death of Bertha Finkelstein, but along the way, they manage to solve a few difficult “domestic” problems of their colorful fellow residents.

Mrs. Kaplan lays out her solution for the police:  Bertha, unable to resist the shiny earrings sitting on a table near Daisy’s open door, took one of them on her way to the seder. She was holding it when she saw Benjamin, the policeman son of another resident who was there to see his father, approach her in his police uniform. Her ingrained fear of the authorities—going back to her childhood in Russia—and guilty conscience caused her to panic.  Seeing nowhere else to hide the earring, she tried to swallow it. It became lodged in her throat and she was asphyxiated. Having discovered no better explanation, the police reluctantly accept Mrs. Kaplan’s theory and she is vindicated.

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This book was originally published in 2014 but has been updated with the new publisher.

Excerpt

The rabbi completed his brief remarks thanking Mrs. K, who was as usual both pleased and a bit uncomfortable, as she doesn’t like to be the center of attention. There was a hum of low voices and then the polite slurping of soup, not to mention quite a bit of much louder slurping. It seems to me the older we get, the louder we eat. And everything seemed fine until someone behind us shouted, “Oh, my God, Mrs. Finkelstein has fallen into her soup!” And indeed, when we all looked over to where Bertha Finkelstein was sitting by herself, she was definitely lying face down in her soup bowl.

And while it is true that at the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors not everyone is a neat and tidy eater, we knew that no one of Bertha Finkelstein’s impeccable manners would think of eating her soup—much less Mrs. K’s delicious matzoh ball soup—from the bottom up, so to speak. There was definitely something very wrong with poor Mrs. Finkelstein.

*****

What was wrong with Mrs. Finkelstein was that she was dead.

Now I should explain, for the benefit of those who might not have much experience with establishments like the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors, that one of our residents suddenly becoming deceased would not be such a strange or, unfortunately, uncommon occurrence. While we know that death comes to us all at our appointed time, the appointments for the residents of the Home are necessarily somewhat sooner and shorter than for the general population. Nevertheless, this was the first time that a resident, and especially one with Bertha Finkelstein’s sense of propriety, had departed by way of their bowl of chicken soup, so you can imagine that it caused more than the usual stir.

About the Author

MARK REUTLINGER is an attorney and former law professor. He now writes novels in which the law is frequently broken, including his “Mrs. Kaplan” cozy mystery series (MRS. KAPLAN AND THE MATZOH BALL OF DEATH and A PAIN IN THE TUCHIS) and the political thrillers MADE IN CHINA and SISTER-IN-LAW: Violation, Seduction, and the President of the United States. His next novel, MURDER WITH STRINGS ATTACHED, a humorous caper/crime story, will be published in 2021. He is also a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books.

Mark and his wife Analee live in University Place, Washington, where in addition to reading and writing, he plays clarinet with the Tacoma Concert Band and enjoys tennis, biking, exotic cars, model railroading, and various arts and crafts. He has no idea where he finds the time for it all.

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