Angela Zeman’s debut book, The Witch and the Borscht Pearl: A Mrs. Risk Mystery Novel, offers an engaging twist on the Watson and Holmes-style sleuthing duo: Mrs. Risk, who seemingly wields magic, and her young, recently widowed florist sidekick, Rachel, attend a down-and-out Borscht Belt comedienne’s comeback party. When their hostess’s sole valuable, a pearl necklace, goes missing, and soon thereafter her manager dies mysteriously, Rachel tries to help as the inscrutable Mrs. Risk attempts to clear Pearl’s name. --Publishers Weekly

If you want a great new murder mystery novelist, think Angela Zeman. If you want a refreshing new book, think The Witch and the Borscht Pearl. Mrs. Risk and Rachel are the most hilarious team I've met. Mrs. Risk is an older woman who can be Rachel's grandmother and Rachel is still in her early twenties. They're very good friends, but always try to outdo each other. Mrs. Risk seems to have the upper hand most of the time. Young Rachel still has a lot to live through and learn.

They are investigating a murder of their friend Pearl's Manager, Solly. Since the start of Pearl's career, Solly has been in her life. His death has been a concern to some, but for others, they think he was murdered. There are many suspects: Bella, his fiancee, and friends like Zoe and Vivian. Even Pearl is suspected at one point. Who will find out the answers and go through anything to do so? Mrs. Risk and Rachel, of course. Even throw in Charlie the milkman, every woman's dream guy in Wyndham. But he has eyes only for Rachel. Let's hope Rachel will be able to let another man into her life after her first rotten marriage to an abusive oaf. From the very first page, become part of the Wyndham family. What mystery will they have to solve next? --Lisa, Book Review Cafe

Dorothy Cannell fans rejoice! Angela Zeman writes a witty and often times-humorous mystery that has enough twists and turns to baffle a maze builder.

The story begins when Mrs. Risk, also known as the witch, takes Rachel Elias under her wing after her husband dies and subtly teaches her amateur detective work.

Rachel and Mrs. Risk are invited to Pearl Borscht’s birthday party. Pearl is a comedian who’s been off the circuit since her beloved husband, Bernie, died two years ago. She plans a big comeback the weekend after Thanksgiving.

But then her sister, Bella, shows up after a thirty-year absence. She’d stolen Pearl’s fiancé all those years ago, and he’d died under mysterious circumstances.

Bella repeats history and steals Pearl’s now fiancé, Solly, along with the famous Borscht’s Pearls it seems. Solly ends up dead. And Bella and Pearl both have a motive.

So the lies begin and Mrs. Risk, with the help of Rachel and a milkman named Charlie, try to untangle the mess and figure out who is a true friend and who isn’t.

Just when you think you’ve gotten it figured out, another kink appears in the chain of events. This is a wonderful mystery with lovable characters that’ll keep you guessing right up to Pearl’s comeback weekend. 5 Stars. --Margaret Marr, Amazing Authors Showcase

Rachel and Mrs. Risk are invited to a party celebrating the comeback of Pearl Schrafft, the comedienne also known as the "Borscht Pearl." Rachel is enjoying herself, listening to snippets of gossip, when a gate crasher in the form of Pearl’s estranged sister, Bella, arrives. Years ago, Bella stole Pearl’s fiancée. What is she doing here now? Does she really want forgiveness, or is she trying to tap into Pearl’s wealth? They go in to talk, and the question seems to be answered when Bella disappears, and so does the famous “Borscht Pearl” necklace. A confection of pinkish natural pearls and diamonds, surmounted by a pearl the purplish color of borscht soup, it was given to Pearl by the love of her life.

Everyone jumps to the inevitable conclusion of Bella’s guilt despite Solly--Pearl’s manager and fiancée’s-- insistence otherwise. Mrs. Risk is a long-time friend of Pearl’s and decides to find out what really happened to the necklace. Her investigation takes a turn when she and Rachel go to another party--an engagement party for Solly and Bella. Before the end of the party, a simple bit of sleuthing will become a murder investigation as one of the attendees dies, and Pearl is the main suspect.

Rachel is our everyman in this series. Rachel is funny, ambitious, smart, and passionate--a wonderful foil for Mrs. Risk’s unsinkable, calm intellect. Rachel’s only problem is that sometimes she acts without thinking, such as when Mrs. Risk is carefully interrogating a suspect, and Rachel blurts things out that make the reader wince and think, "They don’t need to know that yet!" Sometimes these blurtings serve the purpose just as well as Mrs. Risk’s carefully planned actions.

Mrs. Risk is a pleasure...incredibly intelligent, with a flair for the dramatic, she understands people--especially Rachel--and loves them despite their faults. She often falls into the habit of running people’s lives a little, but she does it with such good intentions you find it hard to fault her.

The mystery was very well done--I had a hard time figuring out who was the guilty one, and watching Mrs. Risk and Rachel at work was a lot of fun. Angela Zeman has set this up as a series, although this book is completely stand-alone. I look forward to the further adventures of Mrs. Risk and Rachel. --Cindy Lynn Speer, Suite101

A Village on Long Island, New York... The first pages of The Witch and the Borscht Pearl introduce its narrator, Rachel, who came to Wyndham-by-the-Sea as the very young bride of the owner of a fish store. How Rachel became widowed is a short story of its own. Suffice it to say here that Rachel now sells flowers instead of fish and no man's foot crosses the threshold of her upstairs apartment.

In the last few years, Mrs. Risk, a middle-aged personage rumored locally to be a witch, has taken Rachel under her wing, to nurture and educate the solitary young woman. Mrs. Risk has a wide circle of friends that she willingly shares with Rachel. On the day Mrs. Risk takes Rachel to the birthday party given by her friend, Velma Schrafft, the famous comedienne known as the "Borscht Pearl," they are plunged into a mystery. First, Pearl's sister Bella--who hasn't been seen since she fled to France with Pearl's fiancé thirty years ago--crashes the party. Then Pearl's fabulous pearl and diamond necklace disappears. Only a few weeks later, Rachel and Mrs. Risk again attend a party--this time to celebrate the engagement of Bella to Solly Mansheim, Pearl's long-time manager and very recent fiancé. At the party, Solly drops dead of what turns out to be an unnatural cause.

Mrs. Risk, Rachel, and Charlie, the milkman--who has bountiful patience and his eye on Rachel--set out to solve the crimes before the Thanksgiving weekend. That's the time Pearl is scheduled to make her nationally televised comeback at a famed Borscht Belt resort in the Catskills. Along the way to solving the mystery, we are given interesting highlights of the setting and history of the Catskill resort and show circuit.

Readers of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine or last year's Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Mary Higgins Clark may already be familiar with Mrs. Risk. I haven't had the pleasure of meeting her until now, but the village and its citizens seem complete and authentic, as though they have existed for years. So, too, does Pearl's coterie of show-business friends.

Ms. Zeman describes her mysteries as "cozy," and that seems apt to this reader. The Witch and the Borscht Pearl doesn't have horror or sex to hang the tale by; instead, it has an intricate puzzle and a cast of very human, sympathetic, and not-so-sympathetic people. Well written and edited, The Witch and the Borscht Pearl is certain to provide several entertaining hours. --Jane Bowers, Romance Reviews Today

Do you enjoy the possibility of a bit of magic with mystery? If so, you will find The Witch and the Borscht Pearl much to your liking. The imaginative author gives you a look at life on an entertainment circuit that will soon be a thing of the past, those places in the Catskills that nurtured budding talents, where it was possible for them to get a start down the road to success.

This well-constructed story is played out against this background by believable characters whose lives became intertwined when they were young, but are no longer. Now in their autumn years, one of them is murdered. The main suspects are friends of Mrs. Risk, called a witch by the locals of the town where she lives, and her protege, Rachel, who was recently widowed.

Mrs. Risk and Rachel undertake to prove the innocence of the most logical suspect and, in so doing, uncover the real killer. There are unexpected twists in the plot, with red herrings cast over the trail. Mrs. Risk also displays other talents, adding spice to the story and depth to a most interesting character.

You will find yourself unwilling to put the story aside until you learn who is the killer. A very enjoyable read that I recommend highly. What will Mrs. Risk do next? --Anne K. Edwards, author of Death Comes Knocking, eBook Reviews Weekly

"As a child, I always felt deprived because we went to Long Beach from July 1 until Labor Day and could never go to the Catskills." --B. Franchi

As with most legends, that of the Borscht Belt gains much in memory. The heyday of the great hotels in the Catskills, where working class Jewish families would go to spend a week out of the city, probably lasted only a generation or so, from the late 1940s until about 1960, but it produced some of our greatest performers...Sam Levenson, Red Buttons, Milton Berle, Alan King, Mel Brooks, and even Woody Allen. The Witch and the Borscht Pearl is an ode to that memory.

Rachel, not quite 18, is married to an abusive, jealous fishmonger in Wyndham-by-the-Sea, a small community on the North Shore of Long Island. He never lets her go off the property and fixes her lunch daily. Rachel is growing a garden full of henbane, digitalis, and other toxic plants. Mrs. Risk, the resident "witch," notices what is going on and brings Ike a sumptuous paella one day. While he's eating, he has a heart attack and dies. Before her 19th birthday, Rachel is a propertied widow. She opens a flower shop and becomes Mrs. Risk's protégé.

Velma (Pearl) Schrafft, a stand-up comic, well loved in the Catskill Mountain resort area, is throwing a 58th birthday party to announce her return to the stage on Thanksgiving weekend. Pearl's younger sister, Bella, who had run away to France with Pearl's fiancé 30 years previously, appears at the party and Pearl's friends are aghast at her nerve. Bella and Pearl go into the house. Later that night, Bella is gone and so is the necklace that Pearl's husband had given her many years before, the Borscht Pearl of the title.

Solly is Pearl's personal manager and it is thought by all that they would marry. It's been two years since Pearl was widowed, and Solly has gotten Pearl the coveted Thanksgiving weekend gig, but three months later, at a small dinner party, Solly is Bella's escort, and announces their coming marriage. Solly dies at the dinner, but plans for Pearl's return to the stage continue, as does Mrs. Risk's interest in the case.

The characters are well defined and real. They may be types but they are lovingly drawn and not caricatured. The history of the resort area known as the Borscht Belt is given in little chunks throughout the book, never stopping the action. There are several Mrs. Risk short stories, but this is the first full-length novel in which she appears. I hope there will be more of them. --Barbara Franchi, www.reviewingtheevidence.com

The Witch and the Borscht Pearl is an old-fashioned read that tells a murderous tale without benefit of car chases, gunfights, or sex scenes. The pace is slower and the focus is on the eclectic cast of characters, beginning, of course, with Mrs. Risk (the "witch" in the title) and her sidekick, the young and feisty Rachel. Because of a feeling of indebtedness to Mrs. Risk, Rachel and the older woman have become close friends and have formed an odd detecting duo. As far as I could tell, the only witchcraft Mrs. Risk practices is using her intuition and knowledge of people to see through facades like Superman with his x-ray vision. Former star of the Borscht Belt, a comedienne called "Pearl," holds a coming out party to restart her career, only to have a valuable piece of jewelry stolen from under her nose...as well as her beloved Solly, manager and some say lover, too. The culprit, all believe, is her sister Bella, once banished to Europe after snagging Pearl's first love many years before. Definitely a tangled web, though Mrs. Risk seems to know what's going on before anyone else can see the truth. Rachel and Charlie, the milkman, are along for the ride. Sometimes I forgot this story took place in contemporary times as the language and style of Ms. Zeman evoke writing from an earlier era. For those seeking a mystery that is cozy yet smart, The Witch and the Borscht Pearl might be what they're looking for. --Susan McBride, www.myshelf.com

Angela Zeman’s debut novel, The Witch and the Borscht Pearl, based on her successful short story series, never lets up on suspense. Robbery, scheming relatives, jealous friends, and dead bodies have Mrs. Risk and her sidekick Rachel piecing together clues before the wrong suspect ends up in jail.

Set in the picturesque village of Wyndham and ending in the colorful Catskills, Zeman’s descriptions are flawless. So is her plot structure. She layers secrets upon secrets, moves quickly from past events to the present, and crafts gripping, humorous characters who are all the more brilliant because their dreams and hopes are sadly rooted in what they perceive to have been their glorious past.

Zeman has written an intricate puzzle, constructing a vivid, imaginative world for the reader. -- Marianna Heusler, author of The Night the Penningtons Vanished

"A great read! It captures the flavor and the feeling of the Catskills mountains, and in addition to which, a highly entertaining book!" --Freddie Roman, comedian and current Dean of the Friar's Club

"I've been somewhat of a fan of Mrs. Risk since being introduced to her a few years ago and I certainly enjoyed the revisit. The book held my interest to the very last moment, with quite a few chuckles along the way. I predict a warm reception by the critics and a strong sale with a demand for more! Warmest regards to that very smart Mrs. Risk . . . oh, yes, Rachel, too." --Mrs. Helen Kutsher, owner of Kutsher's Country Club in Monticello, New York

"I just finished reading The Witch and the Borscht Pearl. Rachel rather reminds me of the Demi Moore character in The Butcher's Wife and the story has much of the same whimsical air.

"Rachel, the young independent widow, is a delightful Watson to the unpredictable Mrs. Risk who matches Holmes' deductions with her semi-magical insights.

"Angela Zeman's Mrs. Risk is one of the most appealing sleuths to come along in years and Wyndham-by-the-Sea a perfect setting for all kinds of goings-on that require unraveling in her unique way." --Cathleen Jordan, Editor-in-Chief of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

"Fans of Angela Zeman's unique witch detective Mrs. Risk will welcome her first appearance in a novel, complete with multiple murders and a trail that leads from Long Island to the richly observed Borscht Belt of the Catskills." --Edward D. Hoch, Grandmaster of Mystery Writers of America

That old familiar writer's tale: for eight years I cast again and again onto the publishing waters the story that my insides told me was my one truly good story among my family of rejected manuscripts--only to have it return with such sureness it was as if I'd kept it tethered to my mailbox with a string.

I knew a sale would come (if I never gave up--the unspoken second half of the rule of success). However, I could never have foretold the totally satisfying drama of the event, courtesy of the passion of the late, deeply missed editor Cathleen Jordan. I had written Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine to withdraw the story from submission because I'd found a new place to send it and they'd had it eight months.

Cathleen Jordan didn't write back. Instead she immediately phoned and hurled at me the most beloved of words: "But I wanted to buy that story!" Why I didn't sail off into the stars at that moment, I'll never understand. Eight years is a long wait.

I should also mention that after I agreed, gasping for breath, to "allow" Cathleen to buy the story, she added, "Wouldn't it be fun if Mrs. Risk were a witch?" After an eight-year wait, would you say no? That's how Mrs. Risk became a witch. However, the task of making her a witch has oddly daunted me so completely that I finally copped out with a sly comment in the last few stories that Mrs. Risk might be a witch, or might not. The reader must decide for himself. I don't know how the reader feels about it, but the relief to me is enormous.

That first story sale was followed by another Mrs. Risk story that Cathleen bought, then another and another--all written sporadically among other offerings, including book manuscripts that never sold, and that never featured Mrs. Risk. So following the Pavlovian impulse, I went with success and decided the time had come to write a Mrs. Risk book.

The formation of Mrs. Risk is a peculiarity that has marked all my years of writing that maybe I should mention. She had sprung completely developed into my mind one day, which is frankly how all the stories I've ever sold came, and still come, to me. The books and stories that I sit down every morning at nine and "decide" to write, to carve into the blank white paper (a true professional writes every day whether or not he/she feels like it, another rule)--never sell. So much for professionalism.

However, one night as I read the introduction to Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., I bolted upright in bed (I always read in bed) and yelled to no one, because I was alone, "She's talking about Mrs. Risk!" True, Ms. Estés' description of the "wild woman archetype" described my character perfectly. Maybe that's why I've had such a terrible time adding "witch" to her persona. I saw her so completely before Cathleen Jordan added her twist of witchdom.

For the book, I took my time finding the right subject. After all, it wouldn't be the first book I'd written. I didn't want this one to join the others on the closet shelf. This subject had to be interesting enough, fun enough, to carry my characters to publication.

Then my husband took me to see Catskills on Broadway, the brainchild of Borscht Belt comic Freddie Roman. We even managed to get seats in the best section of the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, right in front of a large busload of obviously well-to-do Japanese tourists chattering in Japanese to each other. I turned and examined them, perplexed. Did they speak English? What would a busload of Japanese tourists get out of a show featuring Jewish comics?

The lights dimmed, and to a home-movie-styled film backdrop of Route 17, the Red Apple Rest, kochalayns, and the various resorts, one by one out strolled four comedians, each to do his/her "turn" of stand-up comedy: Freddie Roman first, as Master of Ceremonies. Then came Mal Z. Lawrence, Dick Capri, and Louise Duart (a fabulous impersonator)--all top comedians, all top specialists in the Borscht Belt brand of humor. Cries of love and recognition greeted each comic. The audience even shouted out the punchlines of beloved jokes. Like the cliché so aptly states, we laughed until we cried. And when I turned around, to my enlightenment, the Japanese tourists were crying just as hysterically.

And that's how I found the subject of my first Mrs. Risk book. I'm Irish, for heaven's sake, and I love Jewish humor! The light bulb flickered belatedly above my brain, revealing to me that we all have manipulative mothers and sarcastically muttering fathers. The Borscht Belt traditions visit the kitchen gatherings common to nearly every culture, to put the funniest spin on the broken plates in every person's life.

The book concerns a retired and frail Borscht Belt comedienne, Pearl Schrafft, who was once internationally famous as the "Borscht Pearl," a nickname her fans bestowed on her. Her husband also commissioned a fabulous necklace with a South Sea purple-hued black pearl pendant, named for her in her honor as the "Borscht Pearl" necklace. Her husband is now dead, and she suddenly finds that she is destitute, with the necklace her only remaining asset. She must engineer a comeback at all costs.

The necklace is stolen, her manager is murdered, and betrayal runs rife through her close-knit circle of friends and supporters. Mrs. Risk, true to her imperious nature, annoys the police as she rushes to aid her friend, the main suspect in the manager's murder. The story moves from Mrs. Risk's small New York village to a large Catskills resort where...but I won't spoil the end.

Borscht Belt humor might be fading into fond history, but Mrs. Risk might help Freddie keep it alive a little longer in The Witch and the Borscht Pearl. I made Pearl, my invented comedienne, an amalgam of all those wonderful comics who have over the years poked gentle fun at the humanness in us all, and who should never be forgotten.

Thanks, Freddie.