Body parts, missing persons and hungry workers throw an Irish town into confusion in MEAT IS MURDER, a darkly comic murder mystery.

Tired and hungry, and worried about paying the rent, Zofia, a worker in a recycling plant, cannot believe her luck when two vacuum-packed hunks of meat come down the conveyer belt.

Zofia’s hopes of her first square meal in weeks are dashed when her husband Stefan points out that should they eat it, they would become cannibals. Reluctantly they visit the local Garda and report their find.

The first job for Detective Robert Carroll and his sidekick James Sayder is to establish which unlucky person the not-so-tasty joints belong to. With no one visibly hobbling around town minus an arm or leg, their attention turns to the local meat packing plant, and the local butcher – a vegetarian – both of whom had the equipment to wrap the meat.

So begins a murder investigation that will have the whole town talking. Everyone has an angle on the story, not least the local newspaper whose endless stream of carnivorous headlines adds grist to the mill.

Lovesick and on his way to a brandy induced nirvana, Carroll is not much use. So, catching the killer, and finding the remains of the limbless victim, will fall on the wily Sayder. But will he keep on the straight and narrow or succumb to the strange machinations of a small Irish town?

MEAT IS MURDER is the third book by Anne Crosse set in a fictional Irish town.

The full list of titles in the series is as follows:

• DEATH IN MAGNERSTOWN
• THE MYSTERY OF SUNDAYS WELL
• MEAT IS MURDER
• PURE POISON