Second up in my promise to read a story a day in the month in the month of May is Sheila Connolly’s “Kept in the Dark.” A nominee for this year’s Agatha Award for Best Short Story, the story—set against the backdrop of a mushroom growing operation in Southeastern Pennsylvania—offers a dead body, a couple of investigators (including a tall, dark, and handsome forensics expert), and a surprise solution to the crime, but the tale makes a couple of nicely twisty departures from the expected trajectory of the whodunit. Juliette Adamson, owner of the mushroom farm (actually caves, as she points out), is both charming and clever—and a nice match for “Mr. CSI-GQ,” as she calls him early on. Plus, the background info on mushrooms that Connolly weaves into the story is fascinating in its own right. I’m not a fan of fungi myself (yuck!), but the story itself proves simply delicious. — Art Taylor