Dead on the Vine
A Finn Family Farm Mystery
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Perfect for fans of B. B. Haywood and Peg Cochran, Ellie B. White's whimsical series debut is full of farm fun, complete with a helpful baby pig.
Reluctant farmer Charlotte Finn needs the help of the livestock to sleuth a mysterious death.
Charlotte Finn never wanted to inherit the family's produce farm--much less plow a heap of money into it. Her plan is to hammer a great big FOR SALE sign into the farm's fallow furrows--but Charlotte's sunny hopes of a quick sale succumb to a killing frost when she finds a dead body entwined supine in the tomato vines. The poor man, it seems, was run through...with a pitchfork?
Now, Charlotte is stuck with running the farm in the midst of a murder investigation. Charlotte's knowledge of farming is smaller than her bank balance, so she relies on caretakers Joe and Alice Wong and their farmhands. Can she trust them? She doesn't know them. There's also farmer Samuel Brown, who still carries a childhood grudge. But the case gets personal when Charlotte learns that the victim might have been her own kin--and seeds of suspicion grow into a fertile field of suspects.
Charlotte turns to the farm's pig to help root out the killer. Soon, the goats, geese, and horse join in, but will Charlotte harvest a murderer--or buy the farm?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After Charlotte Finn, the heroine of the pseudonymous White's lighthearted series launch, is fired from her high-powered job at a Chicago advertising firm, she heads for Little Acorn, Calif., with high hopes of managing the produce farm that she recently inherited from a great-uncle. "I've been to a farmers market, so how hard can this be?" she reasons. Her optimism flags when she learns that the farm is barely breaking even. While showing a real estate agent the property, she and the agent discover the body of a young man with a pitchfork driven through his neck. "I can't sell the farm without taking a loss, and I can't raise money from it while this murder is fresh in people's minds," concludes Charlotte, so she decides to investigate the murder herself. Though she's surrounded by well-meaning friends, Charlotte's real ally is a small, impossibly cute, and intelligent pig she names Horse (because he eats like one). Never mind that the culprit is pretty obvious. Animal lovers won't want to miss this playful cozy.
