Agatha and Macavity finalist Edith Maxwell, author of the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and award-winning short crime fiction joins us today for Drinks with Reads. As Maddie Day she pens the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. With twenty books in print and more in production, Maxwell lives north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, and cooks. Today she's whipping up the Pineapple Run Cooler...and giving away one of her books.
Pineapple Rum Cooler
In Murder at the Taffy Shop, it’s August, full season on Cape Cod, with plentiful sunshine and tourists alike. When Mac Almeida heads out for her early daily walk with her friend, she finds a horrified Gin staring at Beverly Ruchart, an imperious summer person, dead on the sidewalk in front of Gin’s candy shop, Salty Taffy’s.
Lots of people wanted Beverly gone. But when the police find the murder weapon in Gin’s garage, the Cozy Capers book group members put their heads together to clear Gin’s name and to figure out who killed the woman whom almost everyone disliked. Mac’s bike shop is vandalized one night, and when the killer later invades her tiny house to finish her off, Bella, Mac’s African Gray parrot, comes to the rescue.
Mac Almeida’s friend and book group member Zane King owns the only liquor store and distillery in town. He recommends this summer drink to Mac, a perfect cooler for a Cape Cod summer day, using his own King’s Bounty rum. In this version, I use a rum made locally near me north of Boston, but any good rum will do.
Pineapple Rum Cooler
Ingredients
Pineapple juice
Rum
Tonic water
Lime
Fresh mint
Directions
For one drink, mix two ounces each of pineapple juice, a good rum, and tonic water. Squeeze half a lime into the drink. Crush a mint sprig and swirl it through the drink. Add more juice if you like it sweeter, or substitute seltzer water for the tonic if you prefer it less sweet.
Murder at the Taffy Shop, releasing March 31, is available exclusively in paperback from Barnes & Noble for the first year, then it will be re-released on all platforms and formats. I’m happy to send one commenter here a signed copy of the book(US residents only)!
