A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die
Cameron
Flaherty is a self-professed geek turned gardener. She’s given up a cubical for
the outdoors. She prefers her fingers in soil rather than clicking across a
keyboard. It’s a new life and a new world for Cameron as she turns her
great-uncle’s home into her own.
Taking
the plunge from salaried, experienced, corporate employee to self-employed,
newbie organic CSA (community supported agriculture) farmer is quite an
adjustment. But before Cameron can really start to appreciate the new life she
is starting to create for herself, she finds her recently fired employee dead
on her property. It’s obviously murder and is not a great way to close out the
first day of her share program. The challenges and mysteries don’t stop as Cameron
struggles to settle into a routine on her farm, with her share program, or with
building her new business.
Maxwell
combines personal experience with fiction in this novel featuring a cast of
characters who have their own opinions about eating local food. For example,
young Ellie is working on a Girl Scout badge and is learning to appreciate
home-grown food; Portuguese immigrant Lucinda is determined to eat only locally grown food for an entire
year; and Chef Jake prides himself on serving meals with as many local
ingredients as possible. Other cast members add the right amount of neighborly
conflict, jealousies, and suspicions to make the reader nod her head and think,
“I know people like that.”
Although
set in fictional Westbury, Massachusetts, the novel includes real locations,
such as Newburyport and Gloucester. The novel is a wonderful introduction to
farmer’s markets, organic gardening, CSAs, and CSFs (fishing).
This
novel is Edith Maxwell’s first and is also the start of her Local Food Mystery Series.
Maxwell has published several mystery short stories, and has a traditional
mystery, Speaking of Murder,
published under the pseudonym Tace Baker.
A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die is comfortable to
read, which is appropriate since it’s a cozy, but I call it comfortable because
as a reader, I felt like part of the cast and included in the conversations. It
has a nice pace and is definitely a page turner. This is a highly recommended
read for cozy readers, gardeners, and anyone seeking a pleasurable read.
Title: A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die
Author: Edith Maxwell
Published: June 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7582-8461-7
Publisher: Kensington Publishing
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