Something in the Water

While vacationing in Maine, Professor Peter Shandy confronts a poisonous potpie. Massachusetts horticulturalist Peter Shandy is famous for his rutabagas, but he comes to Maine with a loftier plant in mind. Specifically, he wants to size up the world-renowned lupines of Frances Rondel, a nonagenarian whose legendary flowers are even more beautiful in life than they are in myth. Shandy is bitterly jealous, but finds a major distraction in the dining room of the country inn where he's staying. He may grow wretched lupines, but no gardener can solve a murder like Peter Shandy.The corpse belongs to the late Jasper Flodge, a local loudmouth with a toupee and a sizeable gut. Shoveling down the last bites of a chicken potpie, Flodge clutches his chest and falls dead. Suddenly with more to do than stopping to smell the lupines, Shandy must ask Which Maine cook has the bad taste to flavor chicken with cyanide?