Sleuthing Safely by Guest Blogger Edith Maxwell

Be sure to read all the way to the bottom for a giveaway!

Thanks so much to Annette for inviting me over to celebrate next week’s release of Scone Cold Dead! I’m thrilled that my thirteenth Country Store Mystery will finally be out in the world. 

It’s no spoiler to tell you that protagonist Robbie Jordan is weeks away from giving birth to her first baby. And since this is the Writers Who Kill blog, by extension it’s also the “Writers Who Write Characters Who Catch Killers” blog, right? 

I have been eight-plus months pregnant twice, although it’s been a few decades. I can tell you, if I had to be amateur sleuthing and getting myself into predicaments while waddling around as big as a house, that killer would not have been caught. (As a short person, I was delighted to eat for two from day one. Trust me. Gaining fifty pounds on a relatively slim pre-pregnant five-foot-one frame does, in fact, make one resemble a house.) 

The Country Store Mysteries are gentle, cozy, foodie mysteries. My unwritten contract with my readers says I won’t seriously imperil Robbie’s life, justice will be done, and equilibrium will be restored to the community. So, how did I keep Robbie safe as she tries to figure out who killed the stranger in her Aunt Adele’s sheep pasture? 

For one thing, Robbie never ventures into dark basements or tunnels alone or with anyone else. That said, in one scene she does a lot of prep in the restaurant for the next day. She locks up and walks to her car, which is parked near the barn behind her country store. This book takes place in mid-November, and it’s dark by five-thirty in Indiana. The motion-detector light times out, and she fumbles with her gloves on for her phone. When she glances up, she spots a man standing next to her car. 

Her newly found Mama Bear instincts assert themselves, and she resolves the situation safely. After that, her husband Abe begs to let him drive her to work and home, which she refuses. She does promise to park in a valuable customer spot near the front door in full view of the street and lit by the streetlight. Even then she is confronted by someone who seems threatening. Robbie’s Mama Bear rears up again, making the person drive away. Later, smart Robbie further resolves to travel about in only in full daylight. 

There’s another scene where Robbie stops during the day to check out something unusual that she spots next to an abandoned house on a country road. 

I slowed at a derelict two-story brick farmhouse on my right. The west-facing building sat alone next to a field of stubby cut cornstalks. Its four ground-floor windows and center-placed door were boarded up. 

But when something spooks her, she drives away. Playing it safe whenever possible, she doesn’t return until she has company in the form of her long-time friend Lou, who is back for a visit. 

Let’s hope our sleuth has learned a thing or two. Counting the two novellas along the way, “Christmas Cocoa and a Corpse” and “Murderous Mittens,” this is her fifteenth case – and my thirty-sixth published novel! 

Readers: What tricky situations have you gotten yourself out of? Do you play things safe when you might face danger or run toward it? I’d love to send one commenter a copy of the new book. 

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In Scone Cold Dead, country store and café owner Robbie Jordan is just weeks away from giving birth, and it seems Robbie and her husband, dad-to-be Abe, aren’t the only ones grappling with anxiety. A stranger is causing a stir in town and Robbie’s Aunt Adele appears unusually preoccupied at the baby shower. But when someone finds a body in the ram field on Adele’s sheep farm, it’s Robbie’s turn to be worried. Especially after Chief Buck Bird uncovers a troubling link between Adele and the possible murder victim. Robbie has no choice but to knit the clues together and solve this mystery before anything else gets flocked up . . . 

Maddie Day writes the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, the Cece Barton Mysteries, and the historical Dot and Amelia Mysteries. As besotted first-time Grammy Edith Maxwell, she writes the Agatha-Award winning historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Maxwell/Day lives north of Boston with her beau and their cat Martin, where she writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at her web site, at WickedAuthors.com, and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen