Rachel Ekstrom Courage lights Golden Girls fandom on fire with a cozy mystery 

by Jessica Martell

Picture it: Munith, 2025. A lady of a certain age is spending summer evenings deeply engrossed in a new story featuring four old friends—Rose, Dorothy, Blanche and Sophia. Sound familiar? 

Earlier this year, Rachel Ekstrom Courage lit the Golden Girls fandom on fire with her new book “Murder by Cheesecake: A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery.” As a child of the 80s, I grew up watching early evening reruns of “The Golden Girls” once the show hit syndication in the 90s. I have a Golden Girls jigsaw puzzle, return address labels, a refrigerator magnet, and three t-shirts. “The Girls” were my fictional roommates, neighbors, friends, and family members long before satellite and streaming services ushered in a new generation of fans. Obviously, I purchased Ekstrom Courage’s new book the day it was released.

She took a big risk rewriting characters that have been beloved for 40 years. Fortunately, as a literary agent with over 20 years’ experience in the publishing industry, the author knows what readers want. Most of the time, anyway. While the kitsch of this book was a fun romp down memory lane, the writing feels a bit flat. It’s possible that the flatness is due to the medium—text on a page vs. legends on a screen. Regardless, my first impression is that this is what would come out if a person fed every episode of “The Golden Girls” into an AI bot and prompted it to generate a cozy mystery in the same style. The output is entertaining, if a bit saccharine. I can’t help but wonder if the literary quality would have been higher had the author not been shackled to the nostalgia of iconic characters.

The main conflict of the novel is centered around the upcoming wedding of Rose’s (much younger) cousin Nettie. First, the hotel in St. Olaf, where the wedding was to be held, burns down. Without adjusting the date, the couple decides to shift the wedding venue from St. Olaf to Miami the week of the event. Miraculously, everyone who was planning on attending in St. Olaf is available to head to Miami with a week’s notice. Then a third major shift in the wedding planning takes place, along with additional complications, including the eponymous “murder by cheesecake.”. In fiction, especially in sitcoms, the audience agrees to suspend reality to some degree, but it seems like a lot to ask the reader to go along for this far-fetched ride.

Wedding planning malarkey aside, Ekstrom Courage gets some important things right. For example, Dorothy gets entangled in a small drama around finding a date to the wedding because she admits to herself, via omniscient narrator, that she’s a bit lonely. This hint of relatable, raw emotion in the midst of a screwball comedy is very on-brand for what viewers have come to love about the show. 

Another score for Ekstrom Courage is the way she saturates the narrative with 80s details and descriptions. For example, when we first see Blanche, she is “seating herself with a swirl of chiffon on a white bamboo chair.” Shortly thereafter, we see Dorothy, “already dressed for the day in a flowing cream blazer, beige slacks, and chunky gold earrings.” Heavy-handed references to Certs, corded phones, Minolta cameras and video dating, feel like inside jokes to those of us lucky enough to have experienced that decade of excess firsthand. Similarly, the frequent references to events from classic episodes—Blanche’s Rusty Anchor, Sophia’s nectarine, Rose’s teddy bear—will amuse readers as they recall favorite memories with these familiar characters.

“Murder by Cheesecake” isn’t a think piece, but it’s fun in the way teased hair, shoulder pads and Don Johnson are fun. Golden Girls fans will appreciate this book and the additional installments sure to follow in this brand new “series.”