PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY, AND CRIME

Hollywood has duly noted the murders at the PennDutch Inn (Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth, 1994), and turns upin the person of advance man Steve (Bugsy) Freemanon Magdalena Yoder's doorstep to rent the inn for filming. What a drag for Magdalena, and what an opportunity for her starstruck neighborsat least until assistant director Donald Manley is fatally skewered in the PennDutch barn (``Sure enough, the man had a pitchfork in his belly''). When half-wit police chief Melvin Stoltzfus takes his eye off Magdalena's flamboyant sister Susannah just long enough to accuse Magdalena of the killing, she decides to take temporary leave of her current (and first) romantic intrigue, with undersized chicken chef ``Jumbo'' Jim Fortuna, towell, not exactly detect (the final revelation will catch her more off- guard than most readers), but gossip more directedly. As she makes her way among her straitlaced, snipey neighbors and the insubstantial Hollywood types, Magdalena is as amusing as she was in her debut, although this time she alternates rather unnervingly between coy reserve and vulgar japery. Another walk on the Amish side with a mystery even tinier than Magdalena's suitor. Eight accompanying recipes look a lot less highly seasoned than peppery Magdalena.