Maude Stumpleton is dead-face-first in a rhubarb pie.

It's not just tragic. It's suspicious. Because this isn't just any pie-it's laced with a bomb screw, cherry deception, and flour that doesn't legally exist. And to Frank Peniston, former crossing guard turned deranged vigilante, that smells like conspiracy.

As Welvin's annual county fair descends into pastry-fueled chaos, Frank uncovers a secret society of crust purists known as The Buttered Path-a zealot baking cult with a mission: to cleanse the world of synthetic ingredients and explode any pie that doesn't live up to golden-brown standards.

Armed with duct-taped gadgets, absurd metaphors, and enough Full Throttle to power a blender army, Frank infiltrates cotton candy cabals, hijacks fairground broadcast systems, and 69s an undercover operative named Tilda in a pile of hay behind the caramel apple stand.

This time, the stakes are flaky. The fillings are treasonous. And the crust... might just kill.

From the oven of Frankfort Petersén comes another high-velocity, low-sanity installment of the Frank Peniston Mystery series.

Because in Welvin, Massachusetts, justice is served à la mode.