Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Choir: A Ruby, the Rabbi’s Wife Mystery

Agatha Award-nominated Sharon Kahn serves up a fresh batch of Chanukah chutzpah — and murder — on the rails, as the Temple Rita Choir travels through the Canadian Rockies in this laugh-out-loud kosher cozy.

Trouble is brewing in Temple Rita. First, the choir’s upcoming excursion to Banff and Lake Louise is in serious jeopardy when sagging latke sales don’t raise enough money for the scenic train trip. Resident busybody Essie Sue thinks that hiring Bitsy, an aging peroxide-blond tart of a party planner, can help solve their problems. Ruby, our widowed heroine, disagrees, and all Bitsy manages to do is spend more money the temple doesn’t have on a pathetic Chanukah concert.

To make matters worse, Temple Rita’s star soprano, Serena Salit, collapses right before her number. She’s rushed to the hospital but later dies of heart failure. Ruby steps in quickly to support Serena’s good friend Rose, a move that gets her right where she wants to be — in the path of the gossip — when Rose discovers some disturbing entries in Serena’s electronic diary. In a file titled “Spiritual,” Rose discovers secrets her friend never told her: that she was having an affair with the smarmy choir leader Andre and was involved in a neo-Kabbalistic cult. But what led her to write in her last entry, “They’re frightening me”? And did “they” kill her?

Despite everything, Essie Sue insists the choir take their trip “in Serena’s honor,” and the whole Temple Rita group, minus the traumatized Rose, complies. While aboard the train, Ruby’s suspicions of murder are confirmed by a call from her policeman boyfriend — he tells her that poison, not heart failure, caused Serena’s death.

Ruby considers everyone in the Temple Rita Choir a suspect — from the tenor Andre to Serena’s ex, the baritone — but not even she could imagine that her trip through the Rockies would end with a body thrown from the train and a ride on the ski lift from hell. From latkes and lovers to lunatics and Lake Louise, Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Choir has everything it needs to be a great, quirky addition to this sidesplitting series.