Something in the Water

A poisoned potpie pulls botanist Peter Shandy into a local Maine mystery in the series that "offers a blooming good time" (The Baltimore Sun).

Massachusetts horticulturalist Peter Shandy is famous for his rutabagas, but he comes to Maine with a loftier plant in mind. Specifically, he wants to size up the world-renowned lupines of Frances Rondel, a nonagenarian whose legendary flowers are even more beautiful in life than they are in myth. Shandy is bitterly jealous but finds a major distraction in the dining room of the country inn where he's staying. He may grow wretched lupines, but no gardener can solve a murder like Peter Shandy. The corpse belongs to the late Jasper Flodge, a local loudmouth with a toupee and a sizeable gut. Shoveling down the last bites of a chicken potpie, Flodge clutches his chest and falls dead. Suddenly with more to do than stopping to smell the lupines, Shandy must ask himself: Which Maine cook has the bad taste to flavor chicken with cyanide?

©1994 Charlotte MacLeod (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Delightful

This was a good story. Peter Shandy is a great character and this one had a lot of good characters… even without the president. It all does resolve rather abruptly when he puts on the brakes! But somehow it works.