KAPPY KING AND THE PICKLE KAPER

A quiet Amish community is rattled by the death of a young girl.

Even though she makes the kapps (women's head coverings) for her community of Blue Sky, Pennsylvania, Kappy King has always been a marginal figure. Perhaps that’s why she’s befriended flamboyant Edie Peachey and her brother, Jimmy, who has Down syndrome. Edie’s under a bann after leaving the church and living as an Englischer, but when her mother was murdered, she came home to care for Jimmy and helped Kappy solve the mystery (Kappy King and the Puppy Kaper, 2017). After Sally June Esh’s buggy is run off the road and she’s killed while making the family pickle delivery, Edie gets a series of cryptic texts hinting that the death was no accident. Edie refuses to show the texts to detective Jack Jones, knowing that he’ll confiscate her phone; instead, she and Kappy decide to do a little sleuthing on their own. But there’s a problem. Although Edie’s dedicated to her brother and respects his love for their little farm and dog breeding business, she may not be ready to return to the church, and until she does, no one but Kappy will talk to her. All the while, Kappy’s still trying to decide whether she should marry Hiram, the widower of her best friend. Hiram’s particularly worried about his younger brother, Willie, who’s often taken off on adventures but this time is gone longer than usual. Kappy’s also attracted to Silas Hershberger, whose aunt has just moved back from Lancaster and wants to establish her own pickles as supreme. Would Bettie Hershberger really kill someone over pickles? Kappy and Edie travel by buggy and car all over the valley attending everything from funerals to rock concerts while trying to figure out whether Sally June’s death was accident or murder.

Plenty of details about the Amish lifestyle and a more complex mystery than the heroine’s first case.