A Dash Of Pepper

There's a new witch in Picklebury, and her name is Pepper Grinder.

Wait! Stop right there! That's not how it's pronounced! It's pronounced Grin-der. Grin as in a big cheesy smile, and der as in how dare you mispronounce it!
It rhymes with hinder, okay? She's not a condiment dispenser; she's a person!
It's easy. Grinder - hinder. Say that ten times, and you'll have it.

So, there's a new witch in the Derbyshire town of Picklebury, situated in the beautiful region of England known as the Peak District. Her name is Pepper Grinder (that's it - you've got it!), and she's a dab hand at gardening, without knowing the first thing about plants.

Actually, that's not entirely true - she knows a lot about plants, but not the silly things such as their names, or at what time of the year they're supposed to flower. No, Pepper knows none of that stuff, but her magic does let her know how a plant is feeling and what it needs to flourish.

Such a gift is both a blessing and a curse, and Pepper is quick to find out that the police in Picklebury have a dim view of how she sometimes uses her powers. She's used to that, though. It's not the first time she's had a police warning for sneaking around people's gardens, and it definitely probably won't be the last.

When she's not trespassing, or sitting beneath her favourite oak tree in the meadow, Pepper Grinder likes to be alone. She shares her cottage with a cat named Ziggy, and that's the way she likes it. The fewer people in her life - the better, as far as she's concerned, so it's quite unusual when within the space of a day she inadvertently joins a club and takes a small role in a low-budget romantic film about a World War Two Spitfire pilot and his potato picking lover.

With things already far more hectic than Pepper is used to, finding a dead body is an additional nuisance she could have done without, especially when she hears through the grapevine that the man's death may not have been an accident. She can't tell the police that, though - they'd think she was mad if she told them that her informer was a south-facing, fruit yielding plant, so Pepper must take control and solve the mystery herself, with a little help from members of the club she accidentally joined.

With a film director on the hunt for the expensive equipment stolen from his film set, and a strange man skulking around the small canal-side town, Pepper soon realises that moving to Picklebury may have granted her the thatched roof cottage she'd always wanted, but it certainly hadn't afforded her the peace and quiet she'd craved.

A Dash Of Pepper is book number one in The Pepper Grinder Cozy Witch Mystery Series.


Genre: Cozy Mystery