Well it is certainly different,I'll give you that. This is about crime in a farming community in Pensylvania. Stella Crown runs a dairy farm that is just about solvent,when a series of near disasters both on her farm and in the community at large threatens to overwhelm them.
Full marks for an original idea,counteracted I'm afraid by a completely unsympathetic lead character. Crown has been written as someone who has just too many faults and hang-ups for the reader to empathize with .Some of the scenes in which she interacts with friends and indeed enemies are truly cringe-worthy.
I also have to say that there is more detail here than I ever really want to know about the bodily functions of cows. ( )

#1 Stella Crown mystery, Stella, a young woman fast approaching thirty, runs the family dairy farm now, both her parents having died, with the help of long-time farmhand Howie and a host of interesting neighbors and friends. When someone starts sabotaging her farm with various ‘accidents’ that really aren’t, Stella, Howie and a few close friends attempt to investigate and get to the bottom of things. It’s hard enough running a small family farm and trying to fend off the banks and creditors and the big development companies without added problems. And when several area children become violently ill with some new strain of flu—and a couple of them die—Stella begins wondering if the sabotage on her farm and this mystery flu are related. While I did figure out much of the ‘mystery’ ahead of time, I still enjoyed this book a lot. Having grown up on a farm, (a dairy farm even, for awhile when I was really young) Stella’s story caused me to feel a bit like it was old home week and even brought on a brief wave of homesickness, too. Until I remembered how much work living on a farm is! I like Stella, too—she’s an infinitely practical young woman with a bit of a wild streak (she’s tattooed and her alternate form of transportation is a Harley she revamped herself) and yet a very caring, community-oriented person, too. I could see her and I getting along just fine, and my intention is to get to know her a lot better by reading on in the series. A fine beginning! ( )