The Geranium Girls

Beryl Kyte, a letter carrier who lives in the Winnipeg neighbourhood of Norwood Flats, goes out for a hike one beautiful spring Sunday and literally trips over a body in the woods of the St. Vital Park. It's a dead woman with mushrooms sprouting in her mouth. In a panic Beryl struggles out to the main road and manages to hail a cellphone-toting passerby who notifies the police. Among the many officers who arrive on the scene is Inspector Frank Foote whom Beryl has seen around her neighborhood (and whom readers will recognize from Preston's last book, "The Rain Barrel Baby"). A badly shaken Beryl is questioned and escorted home. It isn't long, however, before another body turns up and then another. As she follows the horrific discoveries in The Winnipeg Free Press, Beryl thinks she sees a pattern emerging. Beryl hadn't been of much help to the police in the case of the first dead woman-she'd only tripped over the body, after all-but when things begin happening around her own home, she wishes they could be of some help to her. But she can't even make the call, for the crimes taking place in her yard-someone has been deadheading her lobelia and someone has put a pretty little collar on her cat-will just make the police think she's crazy. Except maybe that nice Inspector Frank Foote.