Miss Dimple Picks A Peck of Trouble-Mignon F. Ballard

Miss Dimple Picks A Peck of Trouble Mignon F. Ballard Minotaur, Feb 4 2014, $24.99 ISBN: 9781250035622 In 1944 with school out for summer in Elderberry, Georgia, first-grade teacher Miss Dimple Kilpatrick visits an orchard to pick peaches when she hears a scream. Stopping her activity immediately, Miss Dimple rushes to see if she can offer assistance to the person in distress at the Peach Shed. No one is there including teenager Prentice Blair, who was working at the Peach Shed. Not long after the eighteen year old vanished, her corpse is found by the old mill. The murder scene is where she and her boyfriend Clay Jarrett would make out. Clay is the prime suspect as recently Prentice dumped him. "Mad Hattie" McGee insists she saw the abduction, but not considered creditable; as she is known throughout town when she is not claiming she is Scarlett for her persistence that Nazis stalk her and her insistence that she knows where buried Confederate gold is. Miss Dimple, with other teachers assisting her, investigates the homicide. The latest Miss Dimple WWII amateur sleuth (see Miss Dimple Suspects a Mystery) is a wonderful historical regional cozy. The inquiry is terrific as the focus is on identifying the killer, but also enables readers to taste life in the home front of 1944 rural Georgia. Harriet Klausner