Feel the Bern is basically mindless entertainment which is too bad in a way since it has a lot of potential. Once Joe Biden actually ran for and won the Presidency, I’m guessing the author didn’t see it practical to continue to Obama-Biden murder mysteries, so Bernie Sanders must have been the back up or the next best option.
The murder mystery takes place when a not super popular community member is found dead, seemingly having drowned in a vat of the town’s main export, maple syrup. This of course happens just as local kid now in graduate school Crash Robertson returns home as the escort/intern of the invited Grand Marshall for Eagle Creek’s annual Champ Days parade (Champ being the Nessie-like inhabitant of the local body of water) Senator Bernie Sanders.
The jokes practically write themselves, and some are almost clever, but neither Bernie nor Crash have much personality beyond local kid with ambition and Bernie of the mittens/grumpy old guy/ democratic socialist politician. I have to wonder if Crash got her name first or if her Ebay handle “crash_bandiloot” did; yes, there’s a suggested explanation of Crash’s name but it’s not detailed enough and I don’t care enough to looking up the reference hinted at. The one new bit added to Bernie’s character is a fondness for the cozy mystery series (which is why he seems to think he can help investigate/solve the murder) Cannabis Beach Bakeshop; guess the bakery owner/main character’s name?
Champ, the maple syrup, and the weed jokes do end up having some kind of relevance to the mystery, but that’s not really enough to make up for the potential that gets wasted in gags like “Sir, this is a {….}”, or Bernie sort of saving the day (not in reference to the murder, that’s a different problem) when Big Maple (and his drones) threaten to do bad things legally (?) with an environmentalist argument referencing a legal something from 40 years ago. I’m actually vaguely tempted to go look it up to see if that’s real or not (the statue Bernie happens to know off the top of his head).
The biggest non-sequitur is the inclusion of a handful of actual recipes for things mentioned in the book; I get that this is a send-up of the cozy mystery genre, but it’s not a cooking mystery so why the recipes?