Hold the Cream Cheese, Kill the Lox

Although they lack the complex and suspenseful plotting of Harry Kemelman's rabbinical mysteries, Agatha-nominee Sharon Kahn's ""kosher kozies"" have a charm all their own, as shown in this fourth installment, Hold the Cream Cheese, Kill the Lox: A Ruby the Rabbi's Wife Mystery. Investigating the stabbing death of Herman Guenther, a quiet old lox cutter, takes Ruby and friends from her home in Eternal, Tex., to Alaska and New Jersey before she deduces a murder motive that goes back to Nazi-occupied Denmark. The antics of self-centered Essie Sue Margolis, who's fussing over the impending bar mitzvah of her obnoxious twin cousins, provide plenty of comic relief.