Three for Pumpkin Pie‪?‬

A Charlene Parker mystery.

Set mostly in northern Ontario at a cottage resort and partly in rural Nova Scotia at her old fixer-upper house, Three for Pumpkin Pie? (book three in the Kirk Lake Camp series of books) features a former Hamilton police detective, Charlene Parker, who would like most of all to spend the season just doing the never ending everyday chores of running a resort, but who seems to end up having to solve murders instead.

It’s Thanksgiving time and creepy Bob is still being Bob, Sarah has decided to stay at Charlene's to avoid her relationship woes at home, men are complicating Charlene’s life, three little old ladies are making it even more complicated than the men and Charlene still must find time to make a Thanksgiving dinner all the while running the resort.

Then of course there are the guests. Not only are the trees too sappy, too messy, too numerous, the mosquitoes and black flies are too many and too pesky, the cabins are too rustic with too few luxuries, with too few televisions (as in none) and too expensive, the other guests are too loud, too drunk, too close, too present, the air temperature is too hot or too cold or too windy or not windy enough, the lake is too cold or too rough, with too few pickerel and bass, the wolf howls are too scary and too close, the black bears are too smelly and too scary and too close, the water snakes too skittish and scary and too close, the garter snakes too, too, too close, the red squirrels and blue jays too chattery and bossy and too close, and the guests' own families are too obnoxious, too stressful, too close.

It's enough to make Charlene want to head south back to a dark alley in the north end of Hamilton to chase a criminal in a hoodie (always a hoodie), with a gun, who is too scary, too mean, too drunk, too stoned, too hilarious, too stupid and too close.

Thank goodness she has time to unwind every now and then with a good Cape Breton single malt whisky.

It’s the last busy week-end of the season and Charlene has lots of work to do to cook the Thanksgiving dinner, cater to her guests and close up the cottages for the winter. What a mess. Sarah invited Charlene's former lover for dinner without asking her first. Sarah is known to stick her nose into business that isn’t hers but she is a detective after all and that's what detectives do best. So instead of just her and Sarah at the table, Joe would be the third. The trouble was, Charlene was thinking a lot about Jim. The trouble was, one of the guests was murdered.