A Pint of Murder

A killer wielding poisonous green beans terrorizes a small Canadian town. Agatha Treadway has done her own preserving ever since the day her husband was done in by a can of supermarket tomatoes. And after four vigilant decades of canning everything from peaches to spinach, it is her own green beans that kill her. Inspecting the fatal jar, Janet Wadman finds it has been tampered with, so that toxic botulism was allowed to seep in. But before she can tell the town doctor that Mrs. Treadway was murdered, the doctor joins the widow in untimely death. To investigate, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sends Madoc Rhys, a Mountie who doesn't look the part. Masquerading as a relative, this squat Welshman helps Janet dig into the town's dark side. And what they find is a deadly secret that proves even more poisonous than botulism. Review Quotes. "One of the most gifted mystery authors writing today." - Sojourner Magazine. "Charlotte MacLeod does what she does better than anybody else does it; and what she does is in the top rank of modern mystery fiction." - Elizabeth Peters, creator of the Amelia Peabody series. "The epitome of the 'cozy' mystery." - Mostly Murder. Biographical note. Charlotte MacLeod (1922-2005) was an internationally bestselling author of cozy mysteries. Born in Canada, she moved to Boston as a child, and lived in New England most of her life. After graduating from college, she made a career in advertising, writing copy for the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company before moving on to Boston firm N. H. Miller & Co., where she rose to the rank of vice president. In her spare time, MacLeod wrote short stories, and in 1964 published her first novel, a children's book called "Mystery of the White Knight." In "Rest You Merry" (1978), MacLeod introduced Professor Peter Shandy, a horticulturist and amateur sleuth whose adventures she would chronicle for two decades. "The Family Vault" (1979) marked the first appearance of her other best-known characters: the husband and wife sleuthing team Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn, whom she followed until her last novel, "The Balloon Man," in 1998.