A copycat crime on Groundhog Day brings out Professor Peter Shandy's
inner sleuth in this Edgar Award finalist from the international
bestselling author.
The rural town of Balaclava greets Groundhog Day as an excuse for one
last cold-weather fling. The students and faculty of the local
agricultural college drink cocoa, throw snowballs, and when the
temperature allows, ice skate. But Oozak's Pond is not quite frozen this
year, and as the celebrations reach their peak, the students see someone
bobbing through the ice. Long past help, the drowning victim is badly
decomposed and dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat with a heavy rock
in each pocket.
First on the scene is Peter Shandy, horticulturalist and--when the
college requires it--detective. But solving this nineteenth-century
murder mystery will take more than Shandy's knack for growing rutabagas.
Relying on his wife's expertise in local history, the professor dives
headfirst into a gilded-age whodunit that cloaks secrets potent enough
to kill.