Lively Contemporary Mystery from Amanda Flower, PUT OUT TO PASTURE

Spring's delights can also mean long days, adding gardening and strolling (maybe even without a mask, at last!) to the regular work week. So a really well-written cozy mystery is a gift to yourself -- and PUT OUT TO PASTURE by Amanda Flower (Poisoned Pen Press) fits perfectly.

This is Flower's second in her Farm to Table mysteries, and opens, of course, with a death. It's one of the significant community members attending the opening festival at Shiloh Bellamy's organic family farm. Despite the immediate disaster of a murder at a public event, Shiloh might have seen this one coming, since she'd only just commented to herself, "If anyone could make good on a promise to make another person's life miserable it was Minnie Devani."

When Minnie's death looks connected to a very public argument with Shiloh's best friend Kristy, and Shiloh's own family structure is threatened as well, it makes perfect sense for her to team up with the local investigation. Especially satisfying in this "cozy" are Shiloh's intelligence and sensible decisions -- a refreshing change from cozy protagonists who stumble from one mistake to the next. Shiloh's also good at speaking up for herself, and pushing past unpleasant people. When she can, she sorts things out with Kristy:

"I wonder who else knew Minnie well? There has to be someone in Cherry Glen who knew who Minnie was. If there wasn't ..."

"If there wasn't what?"

[Kristy] sighed. "If there wasn't, that's incredibly sad. Can you imagine living your whole adult life in a lie? I couldn't love like that. How can you go through life not being known for who you really are?"

I was far less the social butterfly than Kristy was, but I felt the same way. I wouldn't have been able to keep up the lie as well as Minnie had, or I didn't think I could. However, [...] not going to prison would be a pretty good motivation to keep my mouth shut. It clearly had been for Minnie.

Neatly plotted, smartly written, PUT OUT TO PASTURE is a great light mystery to relax with, whether your season includes digging a new vegetable bed or overhauling your wardrobe or saving the world (why not all three?). One small disappointment: no recipes at the end. But hey, you've got other books and websites for those, right? Although you don't need to read the first book in the series, Farm to Trouble, to enjoy this one, it might be nice to grab a copy for later in your own flowering season.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Curl Up with a Cozy (Mystery): MUMS AND MAYHEM, Amanda Flower

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Mums and Mayhem from Amanda Flower is light reading as mysteries go, and lacks vibrancy in the romantic strand so typical of this subgenre of ‘cozy’ mysteries, but it embraces a charming part of the world, in eastern Scotland near the coast, and spins a sweet tale in the process.”

Fiona Knox owns a florist shop in the small quaint Scottish village of Bellewick. And, incidentally, a magical garden created on the former estate of Duncreigan, walled and vibrant, with its own elderly gardener. In two previous books in Amanda Flower’s Magical Garden Mystery series, Fiona’s learned that her inherited role as “Keeper” of what was once her uncle’s place connects her somehow to a mystical stone in the garden, as well as to its vibrancy and beauty.

So when her nightmare this time of seeing the garden shrivel and die turns out to be a vision of its actual condition, she’s knows she’s immediately responsible for its healing. Which, actually, she has no idea how to accomplish.

Making her less able than usual to concentrate on both her garden and her business is the arrival of her American farmer parents, presumably to summon her “home” along with her sister Isla, who’s followed her to Scotland and plunged into a romance with a jobless local. Most distracting of all is the music festival the town’s about to host, a return-home performance by a noted Scottish fiddler with his backup musicians. And, of course, there’s a romantic thread, since Fiona’s been developing a romance with Chief Inspector Neil Craig of the County Aberdeen police.

That’s a fortunate connection to have when Fiona discovers a musician murdered and learns her father, who’d once lived in this very village, was the last person known to see the victim alive. Not only will he not share details of why he went to see the musician, but he’s not talking about a recently revealed family secret, either: that he’s not Fiona’s biological parent. Her genetic father was “Uncle Ian,” the man who’s left her the garden.

Skeptics will be relieved to know that Fiona’s investigation of the crime has no major magical influences to it—the garden is definitely a background stress—so her focus is entirely on clearing her father of any possible role in the murder. Of course, as happens often with a series like this, Fiona’s presence in town has already coincided with death:

“’It’s hard to believe there’s been another killing in Bellewick,’ one of the constables said. ‘It’s almost like this place is cursed.’ …

‘Go,’ Craig said, and his voice left no room for speculation. He wanted the scene secured and now. The constables went off to do what he asked.

He glanced at me. ‘I’m going to go in the bus. Are you all right to wait here?’ He studied my face for even the slightest hint of a breakdown.

I straightened my shoulders. ‘I’ll be fine. Do what you have to do.’

He nodded and entered the tour bus.”

 Though Fiona is not a very adept sleuth herself, she’s plucky, and her motivation pushes her through, and by the time the pieces come together, she also knows the mysteries that her own family has hidden for so long. Mums and Mayhem is light reading as mysteries go, and lacks vibrancy in the romantic strand so typical of this subgenre of “cozy” mysteries, but it embraces a charming part of the world, in eastern Scotland near the coast, and spins a sweet tale in the process.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.