Animal, Vegetable, Murder

February 15, 2013
A newly-widowed urban farmer tries to reconcile her memories of her husband with the discovery she makes at the hands of a dead man. Urban farmer and aptly named Sunny Day Burnett is an optimist who met and married her husband, Ken, after a whirlwind courtship, then settled down to what she thought would be a lifetime of happiness. Now, just months later, Sunny is a widow struggling to make ends meet by starting a farm in the backyard of her home, located in the upscale gated community of Laurelmere, outside Seattle. She's getting ready to slaughter her chickens when she finds that a man facedown in her vegetable patch has already met that fate. Though she doesn't even know the deceased, Sunny soon finds herself hiring her friendly neighborhood lawyer, Horace "call me Ace" Pennington III, to stop the cops, led by DS Stanislaus, from trampling all over her livelihood. Sunny, so used to being straightforward, can't bring herself to tell Stanislaus that she's hiding something: The murdered man was holding a photo of Ken in stilettos and a boa. Sunny doesn't know what to do with this information, but she's sure she has to do something, and quickly. So, on Ace's recommendation, she solicits neighbor and former cop Angus "Mac" MacDougall's help to get to the bottom of whatever it was Ken was involved in, all the while hoping there's no more information to find. Though it's filled with interesting characters, Dailey's debut mystery ultimately doesn't fulfill the promise of its premise.

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April 1, 2013
Sunny Day Burnett, so named by her mother during a hippie phase, is widowed and living in her grandmother's house in Laurelmere, a gated enclave in Seattle. Her neighbors look askance because she doesn't eat at the club and has surrounded her home with organic gardens. When Sunny finds one of those neighbors dead in her garden, the cold shoulder gets much colder. But why is the corpse clutching a picture of Sunny's husband dressed in a pink gown and boa? Shocked by the picture and still mourning the loss of her husband, Sunny hides the photo before the police arrive. With security tight at Laurelmere, the pool of suspects is thin, and Sunny, of course, is at the top of the list. The attorney across the street, Horace Ace Pennington III, offers to be her lawyer. It seems a little too smooth and quick, but then Ace's house blows up. Filled with quirky yet believable characters, this first mystery is engaging up to and through the suspenseful conclusion. Sunny's asides about the environment and the importance of organic living help to make her a sympathetic heroine.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)