Murder in the Mayville Produce Aisle: A Twisty Small-Town Murder Mystery

The Mayville Shop-Rite is closing in nine days. The shelves are being auctioned off. The employees are counting down their final paychecks. The town is preparing to lose one more piece of itself. Then longtime produce manager Hal Brenner is found crushed beneath a collapsed pallet rack in the store's walk-in cooler. Everyone calls it a tragic accident. Detective Vasco isn't so sure. The rack didn't fail.
It was lifted from its anchors. Someone wanted Hal dead. With the store being dismantled piece by piece and the crime scene scheduled to disappear in just nine days, Vasco races to uncover the truth before every clue is hauled away in a truck. As he digs deeper, he discovers a community filled with secrets, desperate compromises, quiet acts of kindness, and people carrying burdens far heavier than anyone realizes.
Among them are a struggling young stocker who may know more than he's saying, an anxious assistant manager hiding financial misconduct, and Ruth Kessler-the warmhearted cashier who has spent thirty years serving coffee, offering comfort, and holding a fractured town together. But some secrets are older than the grocery store itself. And some acts of love leave scars that never heal. As the countdown to demolition continues, Vasco must untangle a mystery rooted not in greed, but in grief-and decide whether the truth will save Mayville or shatter what remains of it.
A moving and unforgettable mystery about loss, loyalty, second chances, and the stories small towns tell to survive, The Cooler combines a compelling whodunit with richly drawn characters and a detective you'll want to follow long after the final page.