Dead In The Pumpkin Patch

Amanda Hazard Mystery #8

by Connie Feddersen

This Halloween, savvy CPA and amateur sleuth
Amanda Hazard is expecting her own little treat. But
somebody in town is playing some very nasty tricks.


A LITTLE PUMPKIN ON THE WAY

With her due date only two weeks away, Amanda is ready to do nothing more strenuous than decorate for Vamoose's annual Festival of the Pumpkin. Nettie Jarvis has promised the mom-to-be all the pumpkins she can haul away. But when Amanda heads for Nettie's homestead, she finds the old woman sprawled in the pumpkin patch, her cane tangled with her oxygen tank.


A BIG HALLOWEEN SCARE

Though her Chief of Police husband warns her not to get involved, Amanda vows to unmask the ghoul who murdered the town's biggest gossip. And when Nettie's ghost is seen haunting the patch, people begin to get edgy. The more things go bump in the night, the more Amanda knows she has a tricky one on her hands, and she'd better find the killer before the killer finds her.

Genres: Cozy Mystery, Mystery, Cozy, Fiction, Halloween

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

About the author

aka Connie Drake, Debra Falcon, Carol Finch, Gina Robins

Connie Feddersen is one of romance and mystery's most prolific and versatile authors. With over 8 million copies of her brooks in print, she has received 8 awards and 19 nominations for outstanding achievement from Romantic Times Magazine. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers of America and Oklahoma Professional Writers Hall of Fame.

Connie is well known for her fast-paced adventures, sparkling humor and lively dialogue. She is the best-selling author of historical and contemporary romance, as well as mystery and suspense. Writing under 5 pen names-Carol Finch, Gina Robins, Connie Drake, Debra Falcon and Connie Feddersen-she has penned 57 books for Zebra and Pinnacle Publishers.

Connie and her husband have 3 children and raise cattle and wheat on their ranch near Union City, Oklahoma.

Reviews

[Dez Nemec · Rating 1 out of 5]

The people were such caricatures, I couldn't take it. On page 21, the sheriff actually thought: "sure as shooting." At that point, I knew I would not finish this. The niece of the owner at the beauty salon literally said "like" in every damn sentence. I didn't find it cute, I found it obnoxious.

DNF - And on to the next one!

[JoAnne McMaster (Any Good Book) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amanda Hazard, a CPA who is very pregnant, just wants to decorate her office for Halloween, try and win the best decorating contest. Nettie Jarvis owns a pumpkin patch, and has promised Amanda all the pumpkins she wants. So, when Amanda arrives at Nettie's she finds more than what she came for. She finds Nettie's body nestled in between the pumpkins. Amanda's husband, Chief of Police Nick Thorn, is sure Nettie died from natural causes, but not Amanda. He tells her to leave it alone, worried because of her pregnancy. But Amanda had received an ominous telephone call from Nettie the day she died, and she knows that Nettie was murdered. She also knows that she needs to find the killer before the killer finds her.

Amanda is an unusual character in the fact that she's a CPA, which is what drew me to this mystery. Usually the amateur sleuths own a retail store of some sort (books, bakery, restaurant, etc.), and I thought this would be different. Which it was, in a few ways.

First off, she finds Nettie's body and decides she was murdered because Nettie was wearing house slippers instead of tennis (and I'm not giving anything away, because you find that out almost immediately). Of course, her husband thinks she's just over-reacting because of her physical state, but tells her he will investigate anyway. And of course, Amanda, who is looking for a little black book that Nettie had told her she wanted to give her for safekeeping, decides to go ahead and investigate on her own. Amanda is made executor of Nettie's estate, which I found different because I've never heard of a CPA being made executor. Relatives, attorneys, yes, but CPAs, no. Not to say it doesn't happen. I've just never known it to be, although somewhere it's possible. Yet there are plenty of red herrings in this book - a lot of information pointing to a lot of different people as the murderer, and you have to sift through everything to find the answer.

However, there were a couple of things that bothered me. Amanda, her husband, and their best friend (Sam Harjo) all call each other by their last names (Hazard, Thorn, Harjo). I found that odd. I've never known anyone of my acquaintance to walk around using the last name of their spouse (and since this takes place in Oklahoma, I'm pretty sure it's not a Southern thing, since my Daddy was from Texas, and no one in his family has ever done it). So the entire book, he refers to her as "Hazard" or "Haz" while she calls him "Thorn." Very odd. But the big thing that bothered me was the 'robot talk.' Anyone who knows me knows I don't like this in a book. Nobody talks robot talk. By that I mean a character will say things like this: "I am going to the store. I am going to buy milk and then I will go to the gas station. After that I will stop at the post office and get the mail." What people will say is the following: "I'm going to the store to get milk and then stopping for gas. On the way home I'll pick up the mail at the post office." This went on through the entire book. It went back and forth between using conjunctions like normal people and then you'd have entire paragraphs of robot talk. The point is, people write this way, but they don't talk this way. I really dislike it when I read a book and all the talk is robot talk.

However, that notwithstanding, I still gave it four stars because I like the characters, I liked the plot, and I liked the mystery. And that's really what counts in the long run.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very pregnant part-time sleuth has her hands full trying to solve a murder before her due date.