The pint in the title of this book is not a pint of beer, as you might expect, but rather a pint jar of home-canned beans—a bad batch that killed Agatha Treadway. Mrs. Treadway did all her own canning and preserving, and was scrupulous to the point of paranoia about it, so someone must have sneaked a jar into her cupboard. Who then, and why? And this doesn’t appear to be a one-off killing; another person in town is murdered, and the Mounties are called in to do some quiet sleuthing. Although in a small town, everyone knows your business before you do, so it will be hard to keep that secret…

I picked this up at a book sale on a whim because the title sounded funny and it’s set in New Brunswick. It’s a bit cozy and slow-paced for my tastes. It took half the book for the Mountie to show up, and several scenes felt like they were spinning their wheels or filling up pages for the sake of it. I mean I did like that the Mountie was doing most of the investigating, rather than Janet (although she does gather a lot of information by simply being a resident of the town), but I was left with an overwhelming feeling of “so what?” This is one of those books that I might have enjoyed more had I read it as a teenager, when I was more into the cozy-mystery genre. ( )

This is one of those stories that has it's characters all busier than beavers with chores and jobs and whatnot ,so that you get exhausted before you get to the end of the book. Naturally creating a timeline of who was where when is an exercise in futility. ( )

In rural New Brunswick, the murder of an old lady (followed by the accidental death of her doctor) upset the community and puts one of the leading families under a microscope. The story is fun, but the motive for the crime is a little farfetched. It says a great deal for detective Madoc Rhys and his Janet that they are are charming and engaging enough to overcome a little goofiness. Fun read. ( )

Fun. There's really not much to the story - it's very light - but the characters are great, the situation is interesting, the murders are twisty - the first one uses a very non-obvious weapon, and if the murderer hadn't slipped up it would not have been detected at all. A happy ending and part of another, and a solidly proven case - very nice. I enjoy Madoc very much - unlike the Grub-and-Stakers, nobody here quite goes over the edge into self-parody. And Janet and Madoc are great as people. This isn't my favorite of them - that's Trouble in the Brasses, for some reason - but it's one of my favorites. ( )

I didn't finish reading this, so I won't give it a rating. It was annoying me because the main characters were behaving stupidly and nothing about the story had appeal for me. Perhaps it is my present mood, but I don't think I'm missing anything great by not reading this.