A Pint of Murder

Written by Charlotte MacLeod

In rural Canada, a woman dies after eating from a jar of tainted green beans—and a Mountie must preserve the evidence.



In a quiet small town in New Brunswick, old Agatha Treadway makes one last cranky complaint to her niece before dying on her kitchen floor. The cause seems to be a jar of contaminated string beans, which sat on Agatha's basement shelf for years before becoming her final meal. The town doctor calls it a tragic accident—and a warning to all who can their own vegetables—but Agatha's neighbor, the intrepid Janet Wadman, knows better. Agatha was an expert canner, which means the beans must have been placed there by someone else. This was murder.



Before Janet can share her theory with the town doctor, he, too, meets an untimely death. To oversee the investigation, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police send Madoc Rhys, a wholly unusual Mountie who poses as Janet's relative while he searches for the killer. But Madoc soon finds himself falling for his partner in detection, and before he can make his feelings known, the pair will have to contend with a secret far more deadly than botulism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781696605687

Charlotte MacLeod

Charlotte MacLeod (1922–2005) was an international bestselling author of cozy mysteries. Born in Canada, she moved to Boston as a child and lived in New England most of her life. After graduating from college, she made a career in advertising, writing copy for the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company before moving on to Boston firm N. H. Miller & Co., where she rose to the rank of vice president. In her spare time, MacLeod wrote short stories, and in 1964 published her first novel, a children’s book called Mystery of the White Knight.   In Rest You Merry (1978), MacLeod introduced Professor Peter Shandy, a horticulturist and amateur sleuth whose adventures she would chronicle for two decades. The Family Vault (1979) marked the first appearance of her other best-known characters: the husband and wife sleuthing team Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn, whom she followed until her last novel, The Balloon Man, in 1998.

Reviews for A Pint of Murder

[condorena · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those stories that has it's characters all busier than beavers with chores and jobs and whatnot ,so that you get exhausted before you get to the end of the book. Naturally creating a timeline of who was where when is an exercise in futility.

[bjace_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In rural New Brunswick, the murder of an old lady (followed by the accidental death of her doctor) upset the community and puts one of the leading families under a microscope. The story is fun, but the motive for the crime is a little farfetched. It says a great deal for detective Madoc Rhys and his Janet that they are are charming and engaging enough to overcome a little goofiness. Fun read.

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fun. There's really not much to the story - it's very light - but the characters are great, the situation is interesting, the murders are twisty - the first one uses a very non-obvious weapon, and if the murderer hadn't slipped up it would not have been datected at all. A happy ending and part of another, and a solidly proven case - very nice. I enjoy Madoc very much - unlike the Grub-and-Stakers, nobody here quite goes over the edge into self-parody. And Janet and Madoc are great as people. This isn't my favorite of them - that's Trouble in the Brasses, for some reason - but it's one of my favorites.

[donnaleasimpson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this book many years ago and thought it was stupid. Then I read it again, and thought it not bad. I read it yet again, and realized the sheer brilliance of the woman. As I've become a published author, I've realized how hard it is to do what she did effortlessly, which is keep all the balls - humor, character, mystery - up in the air at the same time. Good work.

[drruth_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First and best of Alisa Craig's mountie mystery series. Note: Craig is the same as Charlotte Macleod