Vegetables and Vengeance

Vegetables and Vengeance is the seventeenth Peridale Cafe cozy mystery by Agatha Frost, published in 2019. Julia South-Brown, the baker at the heart of the Cotswolds village of Peridale, is stretched thin: her cafe is being renovated, her adopted daughter is moving toward independence, she is training for a marathon, and she and her husband are trying for a baby.

When local farmer Ted Coleman is stabbed during a family gathering, Julia intends to stay out of it. Then Ted's much younger widow, Denise, turns up at her door insisting the Coleman family are lining her up for the murder so they can take the farm. Ted's three grown sons and his ex-wife each have reasons to want Denise gone, and the deeper Julia digs, the harder it becomes to separate family grievance from motive.

As with the rest of the series, the mystery is gentle, the village is the real draw, and the ongoing lives of Julia, her sister Sue and her gran Dot carry as much weight as the whodunnit.