Heaven Preserve Us — Cricket McRae

A reputation as a small town busybody sleuth. A gum-cracking boss who keeps calling her "babe." Now a suicidal phone stalker? Great.

After solving the messy mystery of her neighborhood handyman's lye-induced death, thirty-something Sophie Mae Reynolds makes preserves by day and answers phones at a crisis center by night. What better way to keep a low profile? But on her very first night, Sophie Mae gets a call from a man who is threatening suicide . . . and her. Overhearing the caller's irate outbursts, her morally bankrupt boss Philip Heaven severs the line. As harassing calls to her home increase, Philip comes down with a deadly case of food poisoning. And his eerie last words keep ringing in Sophie Mae's ears: "Threat. Meant it." Now stirring up the town with talk of murder-by-preserves, Sophie Mae and her hunky boyfriend Detective Barr are on a blood-red trail of rancid beets to find and stop the crafty killer.