DEAD ON THE VINE

A displaced ad executive inherits a farm whose latest crop includes a corpse.

Charlotte Finn’s windfall couldn’t have come at a better time, or a worse. The farm her Uncle Tobias left her in Little Acorn, California, gives her a place to retreat when her high-powered Chicago ad agency unexpectedly fires her. But her discovery of a dead body in a field of tomatoes prevents her from putting the failing enterprise up for a quick sale. No one wants a rocky business that’s also a crime scene. So instead, she recruits her friends from Santa Monica, Diane and Beau Mason, to help generate some income from the fields of ripening strawberries. Together with caretakers Ben and Alice Wong and farm expert Samuel Brown, the brother-and-sister team help Charlotte launch a host of moneymaking schemes, including fixing up the old lake to host swimming parties and developing a “you-pick-’em” business to circumvent the high fees their distributor charges. When her human companions turn out to be of limited use in solving the murder, Charlotte finds two assistants whose agricultural experience makes them much more helpful: a teacup pig she names Horse because of his prodigious appetite and a ladybug she dubs Mrs. Robinson for no particular reason. The human-porcine-insect trio attacks the case with a gusto and expertise that would make mere cat sleuths blush with envy.

Animal detection at its most frolicsome.