Jeanne Cooney Knihy

Move over Stephanie Plum, Betty Crocker, and the residents of Lake Wobegon. Retired farmer Doris Day Anderson Connor and her quirky friends and relatives are solving crime in the Scandinavian-Lutheran farming community of Hallock, in the northwest corner of Minnesota. This book, the second installment in the It's Murder series, has Doris and her sister, Grace KellyAnderson, the owner of the local café, taking ninety-year-old Rose O' Brien ice fishing. The day ends, however, with nothing to show for their efforts except a dead body. With Rose distressed over the crime, Doris feels compelled to make inquiries in an effort to move the murder investigation along, much to the chagrin of the sheriff, an old boyfriend and a current puzzle. While in the café, at a funeral, and during a gender-reveal-party blizzard, she uncovers answers, but she also learns secrets and lies that lead her to wonder if she truly knows the residents of her hometown. After all, at least one of them is a killer.

After a hard life on a farm in northwestern Minnesota's Red River Valley, Doris Connor buries her philanderer husband and moves her century-old Sears and Roebuck farmhouse into the small Scandinavian community of Hallock, located on the edge of nowhere. She longs for a retirement heavy on solitude and serenity, but her plans are put on hold when her flamboyant sister and a ninety-year-old friend of the family move in. To further complicate matters, the local pharmacy is robbed, the suspect is murdered, and the sheriff believes Doris's two adult children of being complicit in the crimes. Doris realizes that a placid existence is possible only if she first proves her children's innocence. But can she find the killer among the folks in Hallock? And if she does, will the sheriff, an old flame but a new headache, believe her?