I temped at Barnes and Noble this week, scanning books on
the shelf to see which needed to be taken down. The second section I scanned
was Mystery, which provided me with a bevy of hilarious titles of food-,
animal- and even holiday-related mysteries. I wrote down dozens of the titles
and offer them here for your consideration:
Food-related Mysteries
Truffled to Death
The Long Quiche Goodbye
Behind Chocolate Bars
Assaulted Caramel
(Yes. I say “yes” to this.)
Another One Bites the
Crust
Til Death Do Us Tart
Fudge and Jury (I
would’ve gone all the way with this one: Fudge,
Jury and Confectioner.)
Crust No One
Live and Let Chai
(my personal motto)
Arsenic and Old Cake (I’m
building to something here.)
A Sheetcake Named
Desire (A mere appetizer before the main course.)
Survival of the
Fritters (Wait for it.)
The Silence of the
Flans (Voila! I’m pretty sure “flan” is pronounced with a long “a,” so it
doesn’t really rhyme with “lamb,” but you’ve gotta admire the effort, the sheer
chutzpah of this title.)
Pies and Prejudice
Meet Your Baker
A Crime of Passion
Fruit
A Roux of Revenge
Dial M for Mousse
Éclair and Present
Danger
Pudding Up with Murder
(Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!)
Cheddar Off Dead
Butter Off Dead
(the inferior version of the previous pun)
Topped Chef (I’ve
never seen Top Chef, but I’m glad it
exists just for enabling this pun to exist.)
Bewitched, Bothered
and Biscotti (A strange Venn diagram of fans of food-related mysteries and
classic musical theater. Well, maybe not that strange.)
Scam Chowder
The Tell-Tale Tarte
A Brew to a Kill
(easily the worst James Bond film)
The Wurst is Yet to
Come
Clam Wake
Biscuits and Slashed
Browns (This is a reach.)
Lethal Licorice
Death is Like a Box of
Chocolates (I can just hear Forrest Gump saying that, and it feels me with great
mirth.)
Book-related Mysteries
Bookmarked for Death
Book Clubbed
Chapter and Hearse
Animal-related Mysteries
Gone Gull (A
take-off on Gone Girl, I assume.)
Die Like An Eagle
(The Steve Miller Band parody no one dared imagine.)
A Hiss Before Dying
(about cats, natch)
Holiday-related Mysteries
Cinco de Murder
(Just beautiful on so many levels.)
Rest Ye Murdered
Gentlemen
Hark the Herald Angels
Slay
Miscellaneous Pun Mysteries
Dead, Bath and Beyond
This Old Homicide
(for fans of classic PBS home renovation show-related murder)
Cancelled by Murder
(I don’t know what this is related to. Parties, maybe? I just thought it was
absurdly limp. Ya couldn’t even go with Cancelled
Due to Murder?)
Then there’s Joanne Fluke. She just uses desserts for her
book titles and adds “murder.” So, at this point, she has associated pretty
much every dessert in the Western canon with murder. It’s pretty lazy compared
to the authors who bothered to come up with puns, but I found the sheer volume
hilarious. I had no idea desserts could be so deadly (Death by Chocolate
notwithstanding). To wit:
Chocolate Chip Cookie
Murder
Blueberry Muffin
Murder
Cinnamon Roll Murder
Apple Turnover Murder
Peach Cobbler Murder
Strawberry Shortcake
Murder
Cream Puff Murder
Raspberry Danish
Murder
Banana Cream Pie
Murder
Lemon Meringue Pie
Murder
Key Lime Pie Murder
Blackberry Pie Murder
Carrot Cake Murder
Devil’s Food Cake
Murder
Cherry Cheesecake
Murder
Fudge Cupcake Murder
Red Velvet Cupcake
Murder
Double Fudge Brownie
Murder
Gingerbread Cookie
Murder
Christmas Caramel
Murder
Candy Cane Murder
Wedding Cake Murder
Not surprisingly, she also has a cookbook, which I assume only
has dessert recipes based on her book titles. There were a few books at the end
of her section with more conventional mystery titles, which were just as funny
to me. They included Deadly Memories,
Vengeance is Mine and Fatal Identity.
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of the Har Mar Barnes
and Noble Mystery section as much as I did.
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