photo by Pbj2199 |
Mystery author Lesley Diehl retired from her life as
a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small
cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York where a shy ghost
serves as her literary muse. In
the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields
of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office, and
gators make golf a contact sport. Learn
more about Lesley and her books at her website and blog.
The Chocolate-Filled Donut Sleuthing Approach to Losing
Weight
(This diet won’t kill you!)
Don’t be put off by the
protagonist in my newest cozy mystery, Murder
Is Academic. Sure, Laura
Murphy, college professor, has a lot of degrees, but at her stage of life, they
don’t mean a lot when she spends so much time plunging her head in the freezer
to corral her hot flashes. And she
notices something else. She can be
described as a short, voluptuous blond whose best asset according to herself is
her chest and narrow waist, but a look in the mirror tells her something is
going south. Could it be that a
combination of being a woman of a certain age and all those chocolate-filled
donuts are catching up with her— metabolically-speaking?
Here’s Laura’s so-easy,
chocolate-filled donut approach to getting back in shape. You can eliminate any one of the steps,
although the results won’t be as radical.
First, try an exercise
program. Oh, sure you say. Everyone recommends that. But this one is different. Laura and Annie, her best friend decide
to enter a fifty mile canoeing race, although neither of them had tried the
sport before. The first day on the
water they discover the dead body of the college president shoved under a pile
of gravel at a bridge construction site.
You may want to just skip this last part.
Next you should extend your
exercise program to include a variety of activities, not simply one. Laura discovers dinner with a hunky
biker dude can result in more than messed up hair from the wind. It can result in messed up hair from a
night spent in bed. This is a
highly recommended part of the diet regimen. Don’t skip it.
On to the next part of the
plan in which Laura investigates the murder of her president and gets herself
into all kinds of trouble, but all the running around is a kind of exercise
(see step two above, variety in your exercise program). Another unexpected benefit of this is
she also creates trouble for others, some of them people at the college she
doesn’t really like. Here is where
you give yourself permission to be annoying to others you find annoying. It doesn’t burn calories per se, but it
is satisfying.
Snooping a la the Laura Murphy
approach results in a diminished appetite for donuts while maintaining an
excellent appetite for the biker in her life. If you think this part of the diet is easy, you should be
forewarned that too much snooping can make the killer angry and lead to attempts
on your life. Take on this part of
the plan only if you’re either a good runner or really smart. Laura can’t run, but she’s pretty
smart, smart enough to outwit a killer.
Once your weight has
stabilized at the desired level of maintaining a zealous interest in the biker
guy or any man of your choice, and the bad guy has been caught because of some
clever, rigorous sleuthing, you may begin the donuts once more. You didn’t really think you were going
to give them up forever, did you?
That’s why it’s called the chocolate-filled donut approach to
dieting. Duh.
A final note: Taking up
chocolate-filled donuts again will result in weight gain, so like Laura, you’ll
have to find another murder to solve.
Laura does, and it’s called Failure
Is Fatal. In this one, the bad
frat guys give her a real run around.
Expect Laura to be positively slim at the end.
Murder is Academic
Laura Murphy, psychology
professor, thinks there’s nothing she likes better than coffee and donuts on a
summer morning until she says yes to dinner with a Canadian biker and finds
herself and her date suspects in the murder of her college’s president. Laura’s
friend, the detective assigned the case, asks her to help him find out who on
the small upstate New York college campus may be a killer. The murder appears to be wrapped up in
some unsavory happenings on the lake where Laura lives. A fish kill and raw sewage seeping into
the water along with the apparent drowning suicide of a faculty member
complicate the hunt for the killer. And then things become personal. The killer makes a threatening phone call to Laura. With a
tornado bearing down on the area and the killer intent upon silencing her,
Laura’s sleuthing work may come too late to save her and her biker from a
watery grave.
7 comments:
Hi everyone,
This is a quick note to say I'm traveling for the next several days, but will be practicing the diet on the road by eating any day old pastry I can find in lieu of the perfect chocolate-filled donut. Hey, you do what you have to. I'll check in tonight to see how all of you like the regimen.
H'mmm, my kind of diet. Not the exercise part though. Book sounds delightful!
Thank you for the laugh. Just how many calories does running from a killer burn? I'm pretty sure putting the killer away should negate the calories in a dozen chocolate filled donuts, at least.
The book sounds like fun and chocolate donuts...well yum! Definitely a fine diet prescription.
The book sounds fabulous! Wishing you huge sales!
That donut looks delicious! Leslie, best wishes with your book.
The way I see it, tracking down one killer should be worth as many donuts as you want to eat! In fact, if you do it with little help from others, you should have calories to your credit, so eat on.
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