Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781643852966
Crooked Lane Publishing
$26.99; $12.99 Amazon
April 26, 2020
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Charlotte Finn never wanted to inherit the family's produce farm - much less plow a heap of money into it. Her plan is to hammer a great big FOR SALE sign into the farm's fallow furrows -- but Charlotte's sunny hopes of a quick sale succumb to a killing frost when she finds a dead body entwined supine in the tomato vines. The poor man, it seems, was run through...with a pitchfork?
Now, Charlotte is stuck with running the farm in the midst of a murder investigations. Charlotte's knowledge of farming is smaller than her bank balance, so she relies on caretakers Joe and Alice Wong and their farmhands. Can she trust them? She doesn't know them. There's also farmer Samuel Brown, who still carries a childhood grudge. But the case gets personal when Charlotte learns that the victim might have been her own kin -- and seeds of suspicion grow into a fertile field of suspects.
Charlotte turns to the farm's pig to root out the killer. Soon, the goats, geese, and horse join in, but will Charlotte harvest a murderer - or buy the farm?
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Charlotte Finn inherited her great-uncle's farm - and has no idea what to do with it. She'd been in advertising, but after a bad ad, she retreated in disgrace. Things go from bad to worse when the real estate agent she asked to appraise the farm trips over the body of a young man with a pitchfork in his neck. Now Charlotte and her friends Diane and Beau are stuck there until the sheriff finds a killer. With plenty of suspects - including the town's bully brothers - Charlotte decides she needs to hurry things along if she wants to decide to keep the farm or not. But does the killer decide to hurry things along, too, by making sure they're not found out?...
As far as new series go, this is a pretty cute one, with a pig as Charlotte's main 'helper' in solving the murder. While I'm not big on pigs myself as pets, and I certainly wouldn't allow one to sleep in my bed with me, granted it's a farm so Horse the pig fits right in.
The mystery was done decently, and there were enough red herrings to keep people wondering who the killer was. I would have liked to have known more about Charlotte's past (if she was in advertising, why was she broke, considering she stated she had her own staff), or even the secondary characters, but there's plenty of time for that in other books.
When the killer was discovered it didn't really come as a surprise, since the clues were there all along, but I liked the plot and the inventive ways the characters came up with to keep the farm running while the murder investigation was being conducted. It was an enjoyable read that can be done in an afternoon and a nice start to a new cozy series.
https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Vine-Finn-Family-Mystery/dp/1643852965/ref=
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3167928832
More on Elle Brooke White's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/elle-brooke-white/
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