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Batter Off Dead (2009)

by Tamar Myers(Favorite Author)

3.45 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0451225929 (ISBN13: 9780451225924)

languge

English

genre

Humor

publisher

NAL Hardcover

series

Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery

review 1: Batter off DeadAuthor: Tamar MyersDate Published: February, 2009Genre: MysteryReport by: Chloe Backman Batter off Dead is a mystery about how a women, named Minerva J. Jay was killed. The protagonist, Magdalena, is trying to figure out how she died. She knows the Minerva was killed at a pancake breakfast at the church in their small town called Beechy Grove. Minerva had a big appetite and ate a lot of pancakes. After eating them, she died. Nobody seemed to know how, but Magdalena was determined to find out. She assumed that one of the workers at the pancake breakfast poisoned the pancakes the Minerva ate. So, Magdalena went around asking the workers that were at the pancake breakfast lots of questions. None of them seemed to know how she died. Towards the end of... more the book, one of the workers, Elias Whitmore, got killed by being flattened by a steamroller. Magdalena and two of her friends, Wanda and Agnes, went up to the mountain where Elias was killed because Wanda has some basic information about the driver who ran him over. While they were up there, they saw that a woman named Frankie was stuck in a sinkhole. Since Wanda had long hair, they lowered her down into the sinkhole and let Frankie climb up by her hair. It turned out that Frankie knew how Minerva J. Jay died! They also found out that she killed Elias. Frankie killed Elias because at the pancake breakfast, a worker named Jimmy accidently knocked over a bottle of pills into the batter. He tried to pick out all of the pills, but he had really bad eyes and missed a lot of them. Elias saw Jimmy trying to pick out the pills and didn’t help. Since Minerva had a huge appetite, she ate all of the pancakes that had the pills in the batter. That is how she died, and Frankie killed Elias because he didn’t help. So at the end, the mystery was solved.The theme of the book is to be patient when solving a mystery. Throughout the book, Magdalena was asking everyone who worked at the pancake breakfast about Minerva J. Jay’s death, and there were a lot of people to talk to. For example, Magdalena went to talk to one of the workers from the pancake breakfast named Merle Waggler. He gave her absolutely no information about the day that Minerva died, which made the mystery even harder. She also talked to Elias Whitmore before he got ran over by the steamroller. He gave her some information, but not a lot. Magdalena talked to other workers too, some giving her information, and some who didn’t give her much. She also was asking questions and using the chief of police for help. They met up in a cemetery near the woods and talked about Minerva’s death, and who could’ve possibly killed her, or what happened. It took a while to solve this mystery, but at the end, it was solved.The audience that would like this book is one who likes mysteries, and one who likes comedies. This book at times would make me laugh because some parts were really funny! I enjoyed this book even though it was hard to follow at times, and I am pretty sure that other would like it too. I have never read a book that is like Batter off Dead, but I should more often because this book was fun to read! However, if I had to compare this book to another one, I would compare it to Schooled by Gordon Korman. I would compare it to Schooled because both books have a protagonist that is very strange. Magdalena is very strange. The way she talks is weird, and she is always getting off topic and goes on talking about the weirdest thing. The protagonist in Schooled, Capricorn Anderson, spent his whole life living Garland-a place where hippies live. He had to go to public school for the first time when he was thirteen. Everyone thought he was strange because of his hippie-looks and he didn’t seem to know anything. So, both of these books have a strange main character. The author uses a lot of similes and metaphors in her writing. For example, on page one, the first thing that the book said was a metaphor. The metaphor was “Minerva J. Jay was a glutton.” She uses a simile on page 67 when Magdalena sits down in a massage chair. The simile was “There are few words to describe the sensation that the leather chair ignited in my exhausted, post-delivery body. I honestly thought that I would never be privileged to experience such pure physical enjoyment of this earthly shell even again. It started as a tingle that began to build gradually, and then grew stronger and stronger, ever rapidly, like a river in flood stage…” That last sentence was a simile. I have a relationship with the theme of the story. The theme is to be patient when you are solving a mystery. I, like Magdalena, like solving mysteries. I also know that when you solve a mystery, it involves patience and asking questions. I can be very patient and I like asking questions. This book affected me by teaching me to look for details, and help people. This is because at the end when they said how Minerva died, it makes me want to pay attention to details so I don’t miss anything, like how Jimmy missed all of those pills in the batter. It also makes me want to help more because since Elias didn’t help Jimmy pick out the pills, Minerva and Elias himself died. I enjoyed the story, but what I didn’t like about it was that it was hard to follow at times. Sometimes the book got boring and made it hard to pay attention to. That was the one thing that I didn’t like about the book. Other than that, the writing style, the mystery, and the comedy was good!
review 2: I had mixed feelings about this book. It is quite funny at times, but the laughs come so often, it was wearing me out. This was my first Tamar Myers book, and even with mixed emotions, I would read more of her books, just not back to back. These books are in a series, and this one falls next to the last. Magdalena is the mayor of this small town, and has solved many murder mysteries. In this installment, two people are murdered. What a ride this books was. I felt like I was on a roller coaster that was jerking me side to side. (I've been on that particular ride before and will not go there again.) This was fun, though, at times. And Magdalena's rye sense of humor is unfathomable. I often was thinking, "How did this writer come up with that?" Clever and odd. If you want to laugh. This is a good book for that. less

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