Amazon.com description: Product Description: Multiple award-winning mystery author Jill Churchill's Jane Jeffry is a wonder. An amateur sleuth whom critics have called "a cross between Miss Marple and Erma Bombeck," the incomparable Jane is a hardworking single mother living in a middle-class Chicago suburb - juggling domestic duties, volunteer work, and a healthy romantic relationship with her "significant other," police detective Mel VanDyne...yet somehow finding time in her busy schedule to solve a not-so-random murder or two. Readers and reviewers alike have been captivated by smart, savvy Jane's seven previous investigative adventures. And now she makes her long-awaited hardcover debut in a witty and wonderful whodunit that truly aims to peas.
Wealthy old Auguste Caspar Snellen, the legendary "Pea King," left his mark on the community before passing on - not the least of his legacies being the Snellen Museum, an institution dedicated to the preservation and glorification of local lore and legumes. But at this year's celebration of the annual Pea Festival, the museum suffers a serious loss when its able, innovative director, Regina Price Palmer, is shot to death during the noisy reenactment of a Civil War battle that took place a thousand miles away.
Jane Jeffry was a costumed participant in the deadly pageant. And a prior obligation to help the Snellen staff prepare for an upcoming move to more modern quarters has put her and best friend Shelley Nowack in the midst of a veritable podful of murder suspects.