About the Book

It is 1978, and Jennifer Morgan, a sassy New Yorker in flight from graduate school, has found herself a refuge in the counterculture village of Flanders, Massachusetts. When a dead body interrupts her life of poetry readings, craft shops, and boysenberry muffins, Jennifer fears that her idyll will end quicker than the Bob Dylan album on her stereo.

Egged on by her Tarot–card– reading housemate and in defiance of the hippy–hating chief of  police, Jennifer sets out to find the murderer before any more of her friends are killed. But her friends are also now suspects, and the murderer might be one of them. Is it the gentle artisan woodworker? The WB Yeats wannabe poet? The former hero of the anti–war movement, or the peace–loving Episcopalian minister? What about the organic farmer who knows how to hold a grudge?

When a second attempt at murder occurs, Jennifer teams up with Ford McDermot, a frustrated young police officer who is smarter than he looks. Together – and, more often,  apart – they sift through clues that seem to go nowhere. Not even the strychnine–laced  homemade pickles, the rat poison found in the food co–op, or the cocaine in the abandoned 1970 Pontiac get them any closer to a solution. And meanwhile life in Flanders has come to a grim halt.

If you like snappy dialogue,  unconventional settings, and a soundtrack of classic oldies, have a seat at the Café Galadriel, where the traditional whodunnit meets the days of sex– drugs, and rock–and–roll.