FARMED AND DANGEROUS, Edith Maxwell: Third "Local Foods Mystery"

Packing and stacking: that's the way to enter summer. Packing a beach bag with books you've waited for months to have time to open ... and stacking more of them next to the deck chair, hammock, or (fan above it, of course) summery lounging spot inside, for those buggy or rainy moments best endured with iced tea and a good mystery.

FARMED AND DANGEROUS could go into the bag or onto the stack -- but since it's being released May 26 as a hardcover (yay, Kensington Books!), I suggest the stack. Then put the two earlier titles in Edith Maxwell's Massachusetts adventure series into the beach bag, as a compromise. You can catch up on 'Til Dirt Do Us Part and A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die in between plunges into the water, right?

But it's not necessary -- or even important -- to read these in order. Market garden farmer Cameron Flaherty took over her farm recently from her great-uncle, Albert St. Pierre. She's built up steady clients in spite of the crimes that have struck her acreage (ah, these "amateur sleuths" always have a problem justifying the way murder seems to follow them around!). And the customers for her year-round veggie subscription, in the mode called CSA (community-supported agriculture), have also become friends, sometimes assistants, and most importantly her advisors on what to grow and sell. As this third book opens, Cam's hoping she can enlist the assisted living home where her great-uncle now lives, to purchase her produce on a regular basis. And because it's "New England spring" -- the kind where snow keeps coming back at you -- she's resorting to padding out her CSA baskets for customers with other locally grown and harvested treats, like heritage apple varieties and cheeses.

Maxwell's made a clever choice in bringing along, from the earlier two books, some startling characters. One of them, the very unfriendly Bev Montgomery, is a recent addition to Great-Uncle Albert's assisted living home at Moran Manor. And Bev is still accusing Cam of stealing chickens, and more. "I'm going to kill that woman," one of the staff aides declares, and Cam knows just what he means.

Still, it's a shock when actual death stalks the halls of the assisted living facility. Did it arrive because Cam's spending time here? What's the threat level to her great-uncle ... and is it her fault? What if something were to happen to trap her within the residence with the seniors and, most likely, a killer? Cam already knows enough to be scared. Very scared.

Maxwell proves again that a "cozy mystery" with an amateur sleuth can have edge and taut suspense, and a highly believable set of plot twists (although up here in Vermont, we're less likely to allow a snowstorm to keep us in one place, hmm?). Deft touches of potential romance and stress between the local police investigator and the hard-working farmer add to the fun of the book, and make it an even better "beach read." Cam urges her boyfriend to let her help solve the case:

"Tell me what you found at Moran." Cam reached a hand across the table to him. When he kept his arms folded, she pulled hers back, stung.

"She was murdered," he said.

"That's awful. How?"

The expression on his face changed from fatigue to steel. "I'm afraid you've become a person of interest."

And that, of course, nails it -- now Cam's got to step in and solve this crime, if only to prove that her boyfriend has the wrong direction in his sleuthing. Not to mention protecting Great-Uncle Albert. And oh yes, to keep her local farm in business!

Bite into a Locavore Mystery: Edith Maxwell, A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE

Think quickly, which of your gardening implements could make a murder weapon? Yep, that one, too ... Edith Maxwell, no stranger to shopping at farmers markets and caring for organic veggie plots, picked the vicious multi-tined pitchfork (think American Gothic, but stronger), for her first "Local Foods Mystery," A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE.

Cam Flaherty is a new farmer -- her great-uncle Albert St. Pierre has turned over the operation to her, and she's hoping the cachet of organic, fresh, and local will help her make a good living from her new country life, quite a change from Cambridge, Mass. But it's always the people that complicate life, right? And the whole point of a CSA -- that is, community-supported agriculture, or farm shares -- is people being regular purchasers of everything you grow. Among Cam's group of purchasers is Alexandra, "a Viking princess. If princesses wore cutoff overalls and hiking boots with red socks." And there's Felicity, whose long gray braid hangs down her back; the also gray-haired Wes, the silent type; and perhaps most importantly, Brazilian immigrant Lucinda DaSilva, president of the Westbury Locavore Club but otherwise mysterious and not exactly the sharing type.

But Cam's plans for orderly operations are brought swiftly to catastrophe when the hired man she's just fired (for almost destroying her organic operation!) turns up dead in a greenhouse structure, lying bloodily between the trays of seedlings.

Even worse (can there be worse?), someone else is sabotaging the gardens, even with Mike already dead. And the eye of the Press is on Cam:

The reporter stood ten yards away in Tully's meadow, what passed for her neighbor's quarter-mile-long front yard. Cam doubted if Tully had given the woman permission. She looked uncomfortable standing in weedy grass up to the knees of her expensive-looking black pants. Her cameraperson appeared to be focusing on Cam. How long had they been there? And now the poisoned rhubarb was going to be on television.

"We want to hear your side of the murder in the greenhouse." The drama in the woman's voice could have landed her on Masterpiece Theater. She walked toward Cam, extending a microphone attached to a black shoulder bag.

Maxwell paints the trials and tribulations -- and rewards -- of a small farm in bright detail, based on her own experience as part owner of a certified-organic farm herself years ago. Most important for this cozy-with-dark-edges mystery, she tags the motivations that take Cam Flaherty into investigating the crime, when it would be safe (and easier) to leave the detection to the police. Even in the countryside, the blackest dangers are those provided by criminals who don't care what or who they damage.

Whether Cam can catch the murderer is one pressing question. The other one is, will she still have a working community-focused farm and a group of willing locavores by the time the crime is solved?

This is Maxwell's first detective fiction under her own name, but she also recently started a series under her pen name, Tace Baker. I don't expect she'll have much time for weeding this summer, with two series to write and a lot of twists and turns ahead! I look forward to getting to know Cam Flaherty better as Maxwell's Local Foods Mystery series continues.