’Til Dirt Do Us Part

Maxwell’s engaging second Local Foods mystery (after 2013’s A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die) finds Cameron Flaherty preparing for her first farm-to-table dinner party. Eighty people will gather under a tent on her organic farm in Millsbury, Mass., served from a temporary kitchen in the barn. Fortunately, a threatened storm holds off, and the evening is a big success. The next day, however, Cam learns that one of her guests, cantankerous Irene Burr, has been found dead in a pig sty on a neighbor’s pig farm. When Bobby Burr, Irene’s carpenter stepson who helped repair Cam’s barn after a fire, becomes a suspect in what proves to be a murder case, Cam sets out with Bobby’s mechanic friend, Simone Koyama, to prove his innocence by finding the real killer. On top of the intriguing whodunit plot, Maxwell vividly portrays life on a small contemporary farm. [em]Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency. (June) [/em]