Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble by Mignon F. Ballard, a Mysterious Review.

Review: When a young woman disappears from a local shop, leaving behind her purse and other belongings, suspicion falls on her boyfriend, Clay, with whom it is known she argued. He denies knowing anything about where Prentice is, but when she is later found murdered, he's considered the most likely candidate as her killer, in Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble, the fourth mystery in this series by Mignon F. Ballard.

It is the second death in as many weeks. Leola Parker, who had taken care of Prentice since she was a little girl, had convinced Prentice to break up with Clay and to go away to college in the Fall. There was nothing suspicious about Leola's death, however. Miss Dimple, who had known both Prentice and Clay from her days as a school teacher, doesn't seem convinced that he had anything to do with her murder. And neither does Mad Hattie, who claims to have seen Prentice leave the shop with someone. But then again, Mad Hattie sees things all the time that are only visions in her head. She means well, though. It isn't until Mad Hattie herself is murdered that Miss Dimple begins to consider that maybe she did, in fact, see something … and she was killed before someone took her seriously.

Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble is set in rural Georgia during the Summer of 1944. The war is raging on in Europe and shortages of almost everything are a way of live for Miss Dimple and her friends. A couple of credible motives for the murders of Prentice and Hattie are presented, but this story is really more about a colorful, sometimes eccentric, cast of characters in another place and time than about a murder — or two — to be investigated. To be sure, Miss Dimple works methodically backwards from Hattie's murder to deduce who most likely killed Prentice, and also the reason why, but it is a meandering pathway from one point to the other. This is an enjoyable entry in this series that has an unmistakable English village feel to it albeit one infused with a Southern gentility.

Acknowledgment: Minotaur Books provided a copy of Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble for this review.

Miss Dimple Suspects
Minotaur Books (Hardcover), January 2013
ISBN-13: 9781250009678; ISBN-10: 1250009677

Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble

A Miss Dimple Kilpatrick Mystery by Mignon F. Ballard