A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die (Local Foods Mystery Series #1)

by Maddie Day

Overview

A New England organic farmer is out to catch a killer who’s rotten to the core in this debut cozy mystery by the author of Murder Most Fowl.
 
When Cameron Flaherty takes over her great-uncle’s farm in Westbury, Massachusetts, she’s eager to get the place certified organic. Unfortunately, that means firing her handyman, Mike Montgomery, whose negative attitude doesn’t cut the organic mustard. Thanks to an enthusiastic volunteer and a colorful group of subscribers, Cam's CSA is beginning to flourish—until murder threatens to spoil her success. 
 
When Cam finds Mike’s body in her barn, stabbed to death by a pitchfork, she knows his death is far from kosher. To clear her name, Cam will have to weed out suspects, dig up long-buried secrets, and catch a killer who’s ready to reap another victim.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617732881
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	06/24/2013
Series:	Local Foods Mystery , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	51,231
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Agatha and Macavity finalist author Maddie Day is a talented amateur chef who knows both Indiana and Cape Cod intimately. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and blogs with the Wicked Authors and at Killer Characters. Day lives with her beau north of Boston, where she gardens, cooks, and devises new murderous plots. She hopes you’ll find her at maddiedayauthor.com.

Editorial Reviews

Maxwell (Speaking of Murder under the pen name Tace Baker) brings her expertise as a former organic farmer to her absorbing first Local Foods mystery. Cam Flaherty, who has taken over her great-uncle’s organic farm in Millsbury, Mass., feels obliged to fire farmhand Mike Montgomery after he admits he was going to use pesticide on the beetles he was tired of handpicking off asparagus and potato leaves. That evening, Cam finds Mike lying dead, her pitchfork stuck in his throat. Suspected of the farmhand’s murder, Cam must contend with Mike’s angry mother and an unfriendly police detective. Lending support in her hunt for the real killer are her fellow organic farmers and childhood friend Ruth Dodge, who’s now a police officer. Issues involving immigrants and a local militia group add weight to a plot that builds to an exciting climax. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Computer scientist Cameron (Cam) Flaherty turns her back on the corporate world to manage her great-uncle's small Massachusetts farm. As a self-described geek-turned-farmer with rusty social skills, Cam finds the whole "getting to know you" process of small-town life tedious. Still, she plugs into the locavore community and does her best to make friends. But things go topsy when her recently fired farmhand is killed with a pitchfork in her greenhouse. Cam is now a prime suspect, while she thinks everyone else is acting suspiciously. At the same time, someone is systematically sabotaging Cam's fields and crops, upping her unease. The killer astutely figures out Cam's greatest fear and uses that weapon next. VERDICT Another topically relevant cozy debut introduces a fledgling organic farmer keying into the local foods movement and encountering some whack jobs along the way. This would partner well with Chrystle Fiedler's "Natural Remedies" series.

Library Journal

An organic farmer has a lot more than crop failure to worry about. Cam Flaherty took over her uncle's farm after losing her job. Now that she's switched to organic produce, she's off to a good start, with quite a few people signed up for weekly produce shares, a stand at a local farmer's market and a chef eager to buy her food. Even though she's overwhelmed with work, Cam is forced to fire Mike Montgomery, the sullen son of a local farmer, when she finds him bringing pesticides onto her property. Her shareholders and members of the locavore group that buy her products pitch in to help, but things go from bad to worse when Mike is found dead with Cam's pitchfork through his neck. The police arrest Lucinda DaSilva, one of her helpers, but Cam, unable to believe that she's guilty, decides to do some sleuthing on her own. Her former childhood friend is a police officer whose husband is involved in a local group of bigots who are trying to discover undocumented foreigners living in the area. Besides Lucinda, whose status is in doubt, several other people, some of them longtime residents, may be undocumented, including Cam's new love interest, Jake Ericsson, a Swedish chef, and a Polish businessman whose daughter helps Cam at the farm while earning a Girl Scout badge. Will Cam find the killer before her business vanishes? The first in a planned series offers plenty of organic gardening lore, characters too nice to kill anyone and a mystery guaranteed not to keep you up at night.

Kirkus Reviews