for blog“Murder at the Dinner Bucket Diner,” the fifth book in my cozy mystery series, is now available for purchase at Amazon.

Those of you who have been following the exploits of amateur sleuth Maggie Morgan might be saying to yourself, “Self, somebody’s been killed at the Dinner Bucket? Was a pork chop the murder weapon?”

Of course, those of you who haven’t read the other books might be saying to yourself, “Self, did she set a murder mystery in a bucket?”

Don’t be ridiculous. And, not to sound like Captain Obvious, but if you’d read the books, you wouldn’t have to ask such a question. The Dinner Bucket, as it’s known to locals of Jasper, the county seat of the fictional Geneva County, is a diner that serves home cooking like potato salad and the aforementioned pork chops. The diner’s original owner named it in honor of her dad, a coal miner. The black lunch bucket he carried into the mines remains on display in the diner.

My dad also carried a black lunch bucket, which he called a dinner bucket, into the mines. So, whilst writing the first book, I had the idea, which some have described as brilliant, to bestow the name Dinner Bucket Diner on the eatery.

Due to the catchy name, I had always planned to set a mystery at the diner. The particulars evolved over time, but here’s a synopsis of the finished product:

When Gypsy Hill collapses during her shift at the Dinner Bucket Diner, customers attribute her death to a virus. But with doctors unable to point to the cause of Gypsy’s sudden illness and police unresponsive to investigating her death, reporter and amateur sleuth Maggie Morgan takes up the case. She soon learns that the temperamental young woman was engaged in various feuds. She also learns that the suspects in the case, including a chatty waitress, a thrice-widowed bookworm, and a man who looks like a goat, harbor secrets of their own. And just as Maggie inches closer to discovering the answers to Gypsy’s secrets, another resident of her small Kentucky town collapses at work.

This post originally appeared in the Appalachian News-Express.

Advertisement