Dead on the Vine: A Finn Family Farm Mystery (A Finn Family Farm Mystery, #1)

by Elle Brooke White

Perfect for fans of B. B. Haywood and Peg Cochran, Ellie B. White's whimsical series debut is full of farm fun, complete with a helpful baby pig.

Reluctant farmer Charlotte Finn needs the help of the livestock to sleuth a mysterious death.

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 investigation. 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 help root out the killer. Soon, the goats, geese, and horse join in, but will Charlotte harvest a murderer--or buy the farm?

• ISBN10: 1643852965
• ISBN13: 9781643852966
• Publish Date: 7 April 2020
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Crooked Lane Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781643852966

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Dead on the Vine is the first Finn Family Farm cozy mystery by Elle Brooke White. Released 7th April 2020 by Crooked Lane, it's 336 pages and available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

This is the first book in a small town whimsical cozy (including a pig and ladybug who "help" solve the crimes. It doesn't go full Rita Mae Brown and narrate from the pig's (and ladybug's) points of view, but it edges pretty close). The city-girl-in-the-country trope is in full force although to the author's credit, the humor at her expense isn't mean spirited or mocking.

Some of the characterizations are vague and a bit two-dimensional. I had some trouble keeping her friends' dialogue clear in my mind as I was reading...they felt a bit tacked on and just showed up and disappeared when their scenes were done. The action and plot developments were somewhat strongly foreshadowed, so there was never an *aha* denouement.

I was fully expecting the handsome lawman to show up in the first book (setting the stage for the inevitable romance in future books), and I was totally 100% off base. The lawman is a law-woman and proves to be a surprisingly good friend and sounding board to Charlotte as she attempts to unravel the death of a young man on her property as well as the vandalism which threatens to shut down her dream of making a go of her late uncle's farm before it really has a chance to get off the ground.

The writing is uneven, and some of the dialogue is a bit rough, but as a first novel, and series starter, it's engaging and fun and worth a look for fans of very light cozies with anthropomorphic animals. There is no really overt violence (including the main murder) or sexual content and the language is very clean.

Three and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.