A TRIFLE DEAD Week 4 Discussion

This week marks the end of our A Trifle Dead readalong. I hope you all had fun with this quirky mystery! I'll share some concluding thoughts on the book at the end of this post. Don't forget about Tif's readalong of The Hate U Give coming in July.

This final discussion post contains SPOILERS. I tried to be as vague as possible as to the identity of the Trapper, but it's impossible to discuss what happened without a few major plot reveals, so if you haven't finished the book yet you may want to avert your eyes. In the meantime, you can read the discussion posts for chapters 1-8, 9-14, and 15-20.

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Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens in Hobart
Photo by Sally Cummings via Flickr

I thought the conclusion of A Trifle Dead was really well-done, even though I had guessed the identity of the Trapper about halfway through the book. I think if there's one thing we've learned from this novel, it's not to trust people who eat their side salads.

One of the funniest scenes in this section is when Tabitha gets cranky about the sandwich her kidnapper makes for her:

He came back a while later with a doorstop dark rye sandwich on a plate, looking pleased with himself. ‘I know you like pesto, and smoked salmon, and semi-dried tomatoes, not sun-dried. There’s some baby spinach in there, too.’ Hipster food. My stomach gurgled anyway. Talking about murder raises an appetite... Best not mention that I hate the combination of smoked salmon and semi-dried tomato. Could have been worse. Could have been capers.

Whatevs, girl, capers and salmon are a god-given combo. Tabitha also takes issue with her tea:

He had put sugar in it, which annoyed me. I only take sugar in coffee. For a stalker, he sure hadn’t been paying much attention to my actual likes and dislikes.

Ha! How inconsiderate of him. Wth is hipster food, though, I wondered. Naturally Buzzfeed is here to give us (me) the answer, with a supes-helpful listical showing "regular food" versus "hipster food." Including hipster sandwiches! After reading that Buzzfeed post, I don't think Tabitha has ANY room to complain about hipster food, considering what she serves at her café. Miss ‘tofu and ricotta salad roll, deconstructed.’

I told the waitress, ripping the piss, that she forgot to give me the brush. Ripping the piss, she brought me one. pic.twitter.com/OoX496S3pW

— Ross O'Carroll-Kelly (@RossOCK) March 21, 2016

Moving on, do you guys have any idea what a "blueberry syrup cake," the cake Tabitha made for Bishop before she was kidnapped, is? When I googled it I mainly got recipes for blueberry syrup. Is it like a poke cake with blueberry syrup poured in the holes, or more like this recipe where the syrup is mixed into the batter before baking? Or just cake covered in blueberry syrup? It sounded more unstable than that.

But in positive news, we FINALLY get Tabitha's trifle recipe in the final chapter. Her recipe for espresso cup mocha trifles is:

Chocolate jelly. Coffee custard. A dash of sour cherry curd, for contrast. Tiny specks of tiramisu sponge dotted throughout, and whole marinated cherries sitting fat and juicy on top of the cups.

There were also some more trifle recipes at the end of the book, although I have no idea where they came from. Day's readers? Friends and family? It would have been nice to have an introduction to that section, but maybe I missed it. What I do know is those recipes sounded like a lot of work.

Personally I enjoyed A Trifle Dead more than a trifle (see what I did there?). It was really fun, fast-paced, super quirky, and I loved the setting and the food talk. I also appreciated that there were other mysteries about the characters outside of the central mystery of who the Trapper was. I didn't care a ton about those mysteries, but they added layers to the book that made it more than a silly mystery.

One frustrating aspect of the novel was the whole Bishop/Stewart situation. I cooled on Bishop during the second half of the book for various reasons, but I'm not really feeling Stewart either. Meanwhile, Tabitha seems to be feeling both of them equally. PICK A SIDE!


What did you think of A Trifle Dead? Did you try any of the trifle recipes? Notice anything I missed? Let us know in the comments and thanks for reading along with me this month!