Mrs Braddock's Chocolates A detective story set in the Manawatu by Susan Bell

These books are set in rural Manawatu so picture cloudy skies and green tinged rivers rolling on rocky beds, farmers sons in shorts all year round with rugby socks peering over muddy gumboots and the sharp smell of stock trucks. This book, the second of the Peaches Cowton Books begins... "Percy Long knew Mrs. Braddock’s chocolates had been poisoned because the Postie was dead. The old man put his head down and trotted as fast as he could up the road and into the police station. He flung the door open and hobbled in waving his stick and panting, unable to speak until he got his breath back. Detective Sergeant Julia Reece had been sitting at her desk idly chipping the polish off her left thumb nail and wondering if she had become allergic to milk. The lunchtime chocolate thick shake from Baskaran’s was rolling around in her stomach and she felt vaguely nauseas. Julia was in her late thirties with high Slavic cheekbones topped with narrow, muddy brown eyes, her fine, straight blond hair was tied back in a ponytail that exposed her small pink ears. Each earlobe was adorned with a sparkly crystal stud. She preferred big dangly earrings, the bigger and shinier the better but years of police work had shown her the danger of an earring that could get caught and ripped from a lobe. She had good, straight, white teeth, she had spent a bit of money on them, but when she smiled it was worth it, her face transformed from almost plain to nearly pretty.
“I think he’s dead” Percy gasped. The four occupants of little Browns Creek station looked up."

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