The Dandelion Murders

Description for THE DANDELION MURDERS by Rebecca Rothenberg:

With THE BULRUSH MURDERS, author Rebecca Rothenberg began her highly praised mystery series featuring microbiologist Claire Sharples. A prickly sharp-witted sleuth transplanted from Boston, Claire enthusiastically pursues puzzles like the source of brown rot on peaches and ruinous mold on almonds in lush central California - when she's not practicing her secret talent for snooping into murder.

Alpine hulsea, a yellow dandelion-like flower, doesn't grow in the citrus groves and vineyards of the San Joaquin Valley. It belongs in the High Sierra - only it's found on the body of the unidentified corpse Claire Sharples stumbles upon in a local drainage ditch. Claire knows death is no stranger to the fields and farms of California's agri-business. Tempers run short in the local cantinas. Migrant laborers make fatal mistakes when they toil for seventy hours a week. Then, too, some common pesticides used all too often here have a lethal dose of three or four drops.

But when Claire's dead man is added alongside the bodies of two Mexican nationals also found drowned in this water-scarce region, one realizes the rash of "accidents" may be more than a tragic coincidence.

Urbane, former M.I.T. scholar Claire can't resist her natural inclination to find out as much as any can about the victims and how they died. The more questions she asks, the more she feels like a stranger in a strange land amid the Stetson-wearing growers and agri-businessmen. Unfortunately, she felt the same way at her lover Sam Cooper's house, now that his two baseball-playing sons are spending a month with their dad. Soon Claire is running into trouble with both nature and nurture as her personal relationship starts wilting and her investigation uproots some dangerous secrets. Her instincts, honed sharp by her scientific training, are telling her to watch out for little white lies and some big black ones. And a woman's gut emotions are warning her about passions that run deep and dark through the valley ... and the yellow wildflower that may lead to catching a killer or to her own dusty death.

This is #2 in A Botanical Mystery.