Pesticide

Kim Hays
Works of: Fiction

In Pesticide, a street party in Bern morphs into a brutal riot. Hours later, with the medieval downtown a shambles, a young man is found beaten to death with a policeman’s club. That same day, twenty miles away, an organic farmer turns up on his land, dead and drenched in pesticide. Swiss homicide detective Giuliana Linder and her younger colleague Renzo Donatelli start out on two separate cases, but it doesn’t take long before they find links between their victims. Working together on what has become a single, puzzling case, the two can no longer ignore their attraction to each other.

Pesticide is one of only twelve 2022 police procedurals to receive a Kirkus starred review. Bestselling mystery writer Deborah Crombie called it “a standout debut for 2022”, and James Ziskin, author of the award-winning Ellie Stone mysteries, says, “Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatelli make for one of the sharpest, most compelling police duos you’ll ever read”.

Swiss detectives dig into the cutthroat world of organic farming in Hays’s twisty murder mystery….The result is an engrossing page-turner…[and] an entertaining whodunit.

—Kirkus (starred review)