Nancy Pickard

A short trip to Rhode Island to visit family becomes an extended visit for rancher Genia Potter. Her late husband's friend, Stanley Parker, convinces her to stay and help him compile a Rhode Island cookbook. Each recipe included in the cookbook must contain a secret ingredient. Genia is to host a dinner party at her rented home, with a guest list provided by Stanley. Each guest will supply a recipe for the cookbook. One by one the guests arrive, but Stanley never does. Finally, word arrives show more that Stanley's body has been discovered.

The mystery part of this cozy doesn't break any new ground. Although Pickard does a decent job of casting suspicion on several characters, I managed to correctly identify the murderer and the motive. The fun for me was the setting, and the descriptions of uniquely Rhode Island foods. I was interested enough in the food culture of Rhode Island (a state I've never visited) to add a Rhode Island cookbook to my wish list.

I also enjoyed Pickard's writing style. I enjoy cozies, but I don't often find them quote-worthy. This one is. Here are a couple of my favorite passages:

Over time...Jason had come to know the plants in the spacious greenhouse and the garden as individuals with distinct needs, appearances, and even personalities. And he reacted to them like that. Not that he would ever in a million years admit this, but he liked to spend time with the pansies, for instance, who were sophisticated and elegant, and he didn't like the petunias, who were brassy and thought entirely too much of themselves.

This passage expresses the way I feel about the cookbooks I inherited from my grandmother:

No antique cookbook worth hundreds of dollars could possibly have meant as much to her as this one. Genia couldn't count the number of times she had sat across from Stanley in the past few months, watching him scribble in this book, listening to his strong opinions about food and people and life. And it wasn't merely a cookbook, she saw as she opened it, it was also a diary of the recipes he served and to whom he served them. She found odd bits of paper stuck in it—a postcard here, a grocery receipt there, all wedged between pages...Stanley's bold, penciled notations were everywhere. They were scribbled in margins, in between recipes, written on divider pages, and in the index...He commented on ingredients, added his own inventions, listed who came for lunch.

My grandmother's cookbooks look just like this! One of the pleasures of having them is reading the notes in the margins and on scraps of paper about the occasions when my grandmother used the recipes.

Warmly recommended. show less

This warm and enjoyable book is a tad more adventure than mystery, but has much to recommend it. This was the first solo outing of Nancy Pickard's continuation of Virginia Rich's series featuring Eugenia Potter. The two had written letters to each other, having in common husbands who were cattle ranchers. It felt like fate to Nancy Pickard when Mrs. Rich's husband asked his wife's editor if another author could continue the mystery series after her sad passing. Virginia Rich's creation is show more carried on quite nicely by her admirer, Nancy Pickard, whose own Jenny Cain mystery series is very successful.

Some pottery shards found on Eugenia's ranch inspire her to attend the Medicine Wheel Archaeological Camp in Colorado. It is there the older but lively Eugenia will bond with a group of friends and have more adventure than she'd bargained for. There are many secrets at Medicine Wheel, and at least one of them will lead to the murder of a young misguided girl who was an Indian wannabe. A missing group of young tourists disappear and a second murder occurs before the mystery is solved.

Though the setting and story may sound dark, The Blue Corn Murders very much has a "cozy" feel and style and it is a very light read. The reader is well into the book, in fact, before anything which might constitute a murder mystery takes place. But the atmosphere created by Nancy Pickard is both warm and enjoyable, making it a nice read if you are a cozy fan. Eugenia is likable and the other characters become real as the book progresses. Interesting tidbits concerning the Anasazi are sprinkled in for seasoning.

Those who enjoy the atmosphere of cozies even more than the mystery portion will enjoy this more than others, and find a very likable female character in The Blue Corn Murders. It is an easy read, long on atmosphere and light on mystery. As long as you are aware going in that it is firmly rooted on the cozy side, however, and you aren't the type of reader searching for plot holes, or expecting bodies to start piling up from the git-go, then you'll probably find The Blue Corn Murders very enjoyable.

Archaeologists Corn Bread and Bingo's Chocolate Cornies are just two of the five recipes included in this light mystery with a lot of flavor. Perhaps too cozy for some, but still highly recommended for the right reader looking to relax. show less

Nancy Pickard's 2006 novel "The Virgin of Small Plains" threatens now and then to become a traditional murder mystery, a traditional romance or a traditional supernatural fantasy, but Pickard cleverly controls these impulses and instead gives us an original novel not so easy to place into any category.

Mitch Newquist and Abby Reynolds, the offspring of two the most prominent families in the small town of Small Plains, Kansas, are just teenagers in love when the story opens. Then Mitch show more witnesses something so shocking, so horrible that it forces, him into exile. What he sees involves the body of a dead girl and the actions of both Abby's father, a physician, and the sheriff, the father of their friend, Rex Shellberger. Hearing his story, Mitch's father, the judge, sends him away, telling him he must never return and never reveal what he witnessed.

Years later, following the death of his mother, Mitch, now a lawyer, does return. Rex has succeeded his father as county sheriff. Abby, in a dead-end affair with Rex's worthless brother, still pines for Mitch. The older generation remains steadfast, unwilling to talk about that dead girl or to tolerate any attempts to get at the truth of who she was or how she died.

Meanwhile, the dead girl has become something of a saint, her grave attracting pilgrims seeking healing. Many of them claim to have found it.

Pickard's twisty plot, a succession of surprises, comes down to generational battle, the young punished for the sins of their elders without understanding what those sins are or why they should suffer for them, their parents believing that some things, including that girl in the grave, should stay buried. The real miracle wrought by the Virgin of Small Plains is the power of truth revealed. show less

This satisfying novel is more character study than whodunit, though it has elements of both.

Twenty-three years before the book begins, Jody Linder lost both parents in a night of shocking violence – her father shot to death in the family home, her mother disappeared without a trace. As the novel opens, Jody receives the horrifying news that the man convicted of her father’s murder has had his prison sentence commuted due to irregularities in the trial, and is returning to their home show more town. No one knows if he plans revenge on those who put him behind bars, or whether he simply means to resume his former life of drinking, beating on his wife, and terrorizing anyone who crosses him.

Pickard does a good job with virtually all the characters – the Linder family members, the townspeople who are still agitated over the trial, Jody herself, and the man to whom she is drawn despite a personal history that makes their relationship impossible. Even the returning prisoner manages to be more than a straw man. (He’s still totally unpleasant, but his whining, bullying, everybody-picks-on-me attitude is, unfortunately, all too recognizable). The setting – a small Kansas town surrounded by cattle and wheat ranches – is always present and is itself another character, indelibly marking those who live there.

The observant reader will probably have come to some conclusions at about the halfway point of the book, but it’s unlikely they will get all the details right. The conclusion, where secrets are revealed and lives are shattered, is probably the weakest part of the novel, as some of the characters’ actions seem unlikely, or contradictory to earlier characterizations.

It’s still a worthwhile read, and the characters will stay with the reader for a while. show less