A Murder Between Strawberry and Rhubarb

Cherry blossom season in Lindenbrück — and a fall that changes everything.

Spring has finally arrived in the little German village of Lindenbrück: the old cherry tree on the green is in full bloom, the Squirrel Café is getting its very own terrace, and Hanna Förster is helping half the village plan the big Spring Garden Festival. Even the tomcat Streusel has, grudgingly, made his peace with the construction noise in the yard.

But on the morning before the grand opening, Hanna finds the foundation's chairman, Rüdiger Ahlborn, lying motionless in the flower bed beneath the new terrace — right where a railing should have stood. A regrettable building accident, the detectives from the county town say: missing safety tape, a lapse on the construction site. Hanna doesn't believe a word of it. Because that tape had been there. She'd seen it herself.

Between rhubarb cake and rose beds, Hanna starts asking her own questions again — with the ever-resolute Edith (binoculars in hand, of course), the warm and wonderfully scatterbrained Hilde, a cat who refuses point-blank to go anywhere near the site trailer, and conscientious village constable Jonas Reuter, who this spring finally, openly shows how much he cares. A feuding rival contractor, an angry daughter, a foreman with money worries — and somewhere among them, someone who knew exactly where the light needed to go missing that evening.

And then, right in the middle of the festival, a very old woman arrives in Lindenbrück all the way from Lake Constance: Greta Adler. She promised to come at cherry blossom time — to finally tell Hanna what really happened between her and Marlene forty years ago. And what it has to do with the café Hanna stands in every single day.

A Murder Between Strawberry and Rhubarb is the third case in the cosy, feel-good Squirrel Café Mysteries: a small village in spring, a warm-hearted cast, not a drop of gore — just the smell of fresh cake, a cat underfoot, and a fair-play puzzle you can solve right alongside Hanna.

Works perfectly as a stand-alone — you do not need Books 1–2 to follow this one. Includes two original recipes from the Squirrel Café at the end of the book; more from Hanna's kitchen is in the recipe collection.