Death by Pot Luck: Blue Pond Cozy Mystery, #1

By Joanne Reid

The FIRST book in the Blue Pond Cozy Mystery series is a short read.

Millie MacDonald is a reluctant amateur sleuth who never wanted to be in a situation where she had to solve a crime. Even a small town became too big for her. Millie (referred to locally as Millie George Jack Hughie) has come home to heal her broken heart and avoid drama.

Millie finds out the hard way that the crime of murder can happen even in a tiny Blue Pond, a Prince Edward Island fishing village, where everyone knows everyone and most of their secrets. 

Death by Pot Luck is a clean and wholesome short cozy mystery. 

Death by Pot Luck is the first short book in the Cozy Blue Pond series. It's a complete mystery that you can read in an hour or two. There is no strong language or graphic violence. But there are some nasty people who smile and murder when you least expect it. 

The second short cozy mystery is Chocolate to Die For and it is also a short read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joanne Reid
• Release date: May 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386922766

Joanne Reid

I live on Prince Edward Island and I love to write about people living in small towns and villages. People are so lovely and entertaining and amazing. And so complicated. My Scots ancestors came to the Island in 1803 and my British ancestors on my mother’s side came here in 1817. The British ancestors on my father’s side arrived sometime around 1765 but that is one of those long rambling stories. About the naming of people by appending their father’s or husband’s name, I was surprised when that happened to me. I sent a rare text to a friend and identified myself simply as Joanne. “Joanne here.” Her reply? “Joanne Gerald?”

Book preview

Book One

This is Blue Pond Cozy Mystery One . It is a short read. Book 2, Chocolate to Die For is a slightly longer read.

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Chapter One

It’s Family Day on Prince Edward Island and what am I doing?

I’m shivering outside the Blue Pond Community Hall, waiting for the police. There is no police station in the tiny village. There is a detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the nearest town.

So, here I am with snow to my ankles waiting for them to arrive. Oh, you thought that Family Day would be on a warm summer day where we all head to the beach and eat lobster? Or eat lobster and head to the beach?

No, sirree.  Family Day is the third Monday in February. The idea is that it will break the winters blahs that develop between Christmas and May when the spring really starts.

The truth is, as chilly as it was, I preferred being alone waiting. Inside the hall, Lorna MacQuillan was slumped over dead, facedown in a bowl of chicken soup.

I see the white car with the bubbles on top coming down the sloping street from the highway. It turned at the intersection and came toward me. Before I could say anything to the two officers who get out of the car, Marie Coffin appeared out of nowhere. She beetled up and wedged past me, taking charge and guiding the two officers toward the Hall.

I’m left standing beside the lamp post at the entrance to the Hall’s small parking lot. They’ve left their vehicle right in the middle of the driveway into the parking lot and I have to walk around it to join the cluster of women standing outside the hall’s double door entrance.

Marie commanded the women to close the doors, to keep the heat in, and escorts the men inside.

Marie is in her sixties and neatly put together with her hair clipped short and her hawk face smooth. She’s whippet thin and always seems to be tightly wrapped, ready to spring. She’s the town’s accountant with her own bookkeeping business.

Her credentials are that she used to do the books for her husband’s plumbing business until he finally got tired of her snarky whining and moved off the Island. At least that’s how Mom described it. Of course, Mom was annoyed because she liked having a plumber next door. The pipes in the old family home were in constant need of repair.

I wanted to go home, not to that old family home but to my cozy rented apartment. It was just a couple of houses away. Instead I obediently trudged to the hall where a small group of women were clustered in the front lobby. Marie probably instructed them to stand still and let her take care of things with the cops.

They were speaking in hushed tones of the dearly departed Lorna, praising her kindness, generosity, and sense of style.

Hypocrites, all of them.

Lorna was a couple of years older than me and in much better shape than I was, being an exercise freak and a consistent yoga class attendee. We had been in high school together until she graduated the year before I did.

Back then, she was slender and perky, and she was very proud of having maintained her figure in the thirty years since we graduated. Since I graduated. It had been thirty-one years for her. She was also proud of her persistent tan which she credited to working with her husband. They fished together, and she tanned naked (or so I heard) on their fishing boat between hauling in traps.

I am sure she maintained it over the winter in tanning beds in Charlottetown when she got her frequent mani-pedis and the artful assortment of blond tints and streaks in her auburn locks.

Men loved her; women hated her.

You would never know that now, listening to them mourn her sudden death. Okay, it was a shock. I had to admit that, and my acerbity was my response. At least I told myself that.

Gayle Thompson said, I bet it was a stroke. I’m sure she lived on diet pills and they can cause a stroke. Gayle was in high school with Lorna and