Groomed for Murder: A Pet Boutique Mystery by Annie Knox: Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine. It spotlights upcoming releases that we are eagerly anticipating.

Groomed for Murder

I enjoyed the first in the Pet Boutique mystery series, Paws for Murder by Annie Knox, and am eagerly looking forward to reading the second in the series, a stand alone cozy, Groomed for Murder.

Publication date: September 2, 2014 by Signet.
Here is the goodreads book description. You can decide for yourself if this is a cozy you would wait for.

Izzy McHale wants her new Trendy Tails Pet Boutique in Merryville, Minnesota, to be the height of canine couture and feline fashions. Izzy is hard at work coordinating two special weddings at Trendy Tails. First, Izzy’s friend and mentor, Ingrid, will be tying the knot with her old flame. And a week later, Izzy will host “pupptials” for two lovable dogs.  

The Trendy Tails crew is intrigued by Daniel, an enigmatic writer boarding above the shop. Unfortunately, Daniel  drops dead at the altar on Ingrid’s wedding day. When Izzy's Aunt Dolly is found at the scene with the murder weapon, Izzy, her pals, and her scrappy pets, Packer and Jinx, have to find the real killer...

The pet boutique solves a crime as it preps for a doggie "wedding," holey moley!

Book Review: The Big Kitty by Claire Donally

"You don't seem too familiar with cats, if you don't mind my saying so. What'd he do, adopt you?"
"I - I guess so," Sunny admitted. (ch.14)

Title: The Big Kitty: A Sunny and Shadows Mystery
Author: Claire Donally
Paperback: 304 pages; Berkley; May 1, 2012

I had just gotten this book and couldn't resist reading it right away. The big kitty on the cover drew me in, but as I opened the book, I hoped I wasn't going to be meeting a talking cat. Luckily for me, Shadow doesn't talk to humans, but we find out what he's thinking through our omniscient narrator, the author, who tell us all.

Shadow was an independent cat, who came and went as he pleased, fed and housed by a Cat Lady who owned dozens of other cats. When the cat lady Ada is found dead at the bottom of her basement stairs, a new person comes into his life - Sunny, a young woman whom he follows home and who takes him in, in spite of her elderly father who tries many times to get rid of him.

Nevertheless, Shadow becomes a big help to Sunny, a part-time reporter, and helps in her investigation of the cat lady Ada, whose death is ruled a homicide. Ada had let everyone know that she had misplaced a winning lottery ticket worth six million dollars and was searching for it. Several people in the small Maine town had good reason to want that ticket.

The big kitty saves Sunny's life at least once during her investigation, and so becomes one of a team of two - amateur sleuths in this first in the new cozy series. It's a cute twosome and a clever play of words in the name -Sunny and Shadow.

Sunny's personality and Shadow's silent but intriguing point of view make the cozy worthwhile, though I found this story lagged in the second half.  I am looking forward to the next in the series!

I received a complimentary review copy of The Big Kitty.

A Case of Kidnapping: Three Mystery Novels

Breezed through three enjoyable mysteries set in Florida, Malibu, and Delhi, borrowed from my local library. They all have one thing in common - a kidnapping plus murder mysteries to solve.

The Case of the Missing Servant: From the Files of Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator (A Vish Puri Mystery) is by Tarquin Hall, a British writer who lies in London and Delhi, India.

His main character, Vish Puri, is a portly, likeable Punjabi P.I. who employs an unlikely team of helpers with the descriptive nicknames of Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream. His search for a missing servant, Mary, takes Puri to the deserts of Jaipur and the uranium mines of Jharkhand. I rated this a 4.5 out of 5 for unique setting, characterization, and plot.

Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs: A Dixie Hemingway Mystery (Dixie Hemingway Mysteries) by Blaize Clement, author of 5 petsitter cozy mysteries, is set on a small Florida Key near Sarasota.
A 12-year-old girl from L.A. shows up there but then goes missing, and a high school friend's husband is kidnapped for ransom. Dixie tries to find the girl and help her friend while petsitting her many clients' cats, dogs, and birds. An enjoyable and easy read, I also rated this 4.5 out of 5 for characterization, setting, and plot.

The Case of the Kidnapped Angel (Masao Masuto mystery) by E.V. Cunningham aka Howard Fast, features a Buddhist policeman, Detective Sergeant Masao Masuto of the Beverly Hills police force, California.

In this novel, a Hollywood sex goddess is kidnapped from her Malibu beach home. Masuto's unorthodox investigative procedures and his keen insight makes him a detective to follow. I rated this a 4 out of 5 for characterization and writing. Easy to read, spare and direct, a police procedural that is enjoyable and unusual. There are six other novels in this mystery series.

Book Review: Beaglemania by Linda O. Johnston

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to choose two sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.

"So what's the official theory?" I addressed my question to Ralph. "I suspect it was my buddy Efram, here, who tossed those puppies into the drain."  (ch. 1)

Beaglemania (A Pet Rescue Mystery) by Linda O. Johnston
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Berkley (March 1, 2011)
Genre: mystery
Objective review: 3.75/5

Book description: "Lauren Vancouver is the head of HotRescues, a no-kill animal shelter north of Los Angeles, but it's often human nature that puts her in the path of danger. Just like when she helps rescue four adorable beagle puppies that were dumped down a drainpipe at a nasty puppy mill. One of the mill's employees has a history of dog abuse-and a bone to pick with Lauren. And when he's found dead at HotRescues after threatening her, Lauren will have to sniff out the real killer to keep herself out of a cage..." (Goodreads).

Comments: I like that the author brings the problem of puppy mills and pet rescue efforts to light through this novel, the first in the new pet rescue series. The plot so far is good,  but I keep comparing pet rescuer Lauren Vancouver to Kendra Ballantyne, the petsitter in Linda O. Johnston's other mystery series, and Lauren is not as well developed a character as yet.  Still a mystery worth reading.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Book Review: Cat Sitter among the Pigeons by Blaize Clement

Title: Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons: A Dixie Hemingway Mystery
Author: Blaize Clement
Publisher: Minotaur Books (January 4, 2011)
Genre: pet sitter mystery, cozy
Source: Library
Rating: 4/5

The men in the backseat released their hold on me. One of them turned his head toward me and spoke through the slit in his mask.
"I guess we made a mistake." He sounded hopeful, as if he thought I might forget the whole thing.
The other one said,"Vern, what're you going to do with her?"
I wanted to know that myself. (ch. 3)

Comments: I always enjoy the pet sitter mysteries by Clement. Her character, Dixie Hemingway, lives on Siesta Key (fictional, I think) in Florida and takes care of pets twice a day, early in the morning from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m., and again in the afternoons. Her charges range from regular cats and dogs, to parrots, iguanas,  etc. You read about the different animals she feeds, walks, and grooms, in the six books in the series. Dixie draws the line at snakes, however, and hands over those jobs to other pet sitters. She often comes across dead bodies (of humans) while doing her job and solves these mysteries as a great amateur sleuth. Her love interest is the detective in the town, Guidry.

Product Description:  "In the sixth installment of the mystery series, Dixie is caring for the cat of a prickly old man whose granddaughter shows up with baby in tow. Dixie desperately tries to save this young woman and her infant from murderous con-artists ready to kill in order to hold on to the millions they stole from naïve investors. The villains, though, are not run-of-the-mill criminals; they are among the socially prominent movers and shakers in Dixie’s town.

Dixie must confront her greatest fears and try to save the lives of the innocent, both two-legged and four."

About the Author: This is the sixth novel in BLAIZE CLEMENT’s Dixie Hemingway mystery series. The author lives in Sarasota, Florida.

Book Review: The Anteater of Death by Betty Web

The Anteater of Death

The anteater is not really a pet, only to a zookeeper who would rather feed and take care of zoo animals than do anything else. In The Anteater of Death by Betty Web, the mystery surrounds a dead man found in the bushes in a giant anteater's exhibit in a small private California zoo.

Having established that the man was shot and had died before he was pawed at by the anteater's four inch claws, the zookeeper must now try to find out why and who killed the man, a member of a prominent family with properties that include the private zoo.

Our heroine is unconventional, shuns the lifestyle of her wealthy mother, loves being a zookeeper, and lives on the harbor in a 30-foot diesel boat she inherited from her father.

The author did her research at the Phoenix Zoo, where there really is a giant anteater that loves to eat mashed bananas.

============
Did I say that anteaters aren't used as pets? Well, holy Moses, they are!
Just visit this website on Pua the Anteater, somebody's pet, a blog with pictures of a Tamandua anteater walking on a leash, dressed in a shirt, standing on the sofa, and so on.

Taqmandua Girl

Tamanduas are medium sized anteaters, distinct from the pigmi variety or the giant anteater featured in The Anteater of Death. All anteaters are rare, I understand, but only the giant anteater is endangered. Otherwise, no one would be allowed to have one on a leash!

Pet and Animal Mystery books

Here is Cocooning Book List No. 2.
This one has pet/animal/veterinarian themes.

1. Tortoise Soup, Jessica Speart, wildlife mystery

2. Murder with Peacocks, Donna Andrews (recommend this one as a very funny book).

3. Stud Rites, Susan Conant, malamute owner.

4. Hush Puppy, Lauren Berenson, owner of standard poodles

5. Ten Little Bloodhounds, by the late Virginia Lanier, bloodhounds used in detecting. (Highly recommended series)

6. Murder Most Beastly, Melissa Cleary

7. Curiousity Killed the Cat Sitter, Blaize Clement, petsitter mystery

8. Meow is for Murder, Linda O. Johnson

9. Putting on the Dog, Cynthia Baxter, veterinary mystery

10. Murder on the Iditarod Trail, Sue Henry, Alaskan dog musher mystery

11. The Anteater of Death, Betty Web, a Gunn Zoo zookeeper mystery.

12. Whiskey on the Rocks, Nina Wright, Aghan hound owner


13. Cat mysteries by Carole Nelson, Rita Mae Brown, Garrison Allen, Lillian Jackson Braun, and Shirley Rousseau Murphy. (Some of these authors write about very cute talking cats).

Somehow I can't get excited about cats that talk. Dog writers don't have their pets conversing in human as cat writers do. Maybe that's because dogs are natural, super nonverbal communicators.

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a novel by Mark Haddon is about an autistic boy who decides to find out who killed a neighbor's dog. It tries to show the world through the eyes of this autistic boy, how he processes information and how he reacts to other people. It's a mystery novel, though.

Tried to finish Norway to Hide, a mystery by Mady Hunter set in Scandinavia, but scanned to the end to find out whodunit instead of reading it through. Too many attempts at humor by the author that fell flat. The book lacks the wit of truly funny writers such as Tamar Myers.

Book Review: Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues by Blaize Clement

Pet sitter Dixie Hemingway lives on Siesta Key, a small island off the coast of Sarasota, Fla. She has become involved before in solving crimes while doing her rounds taking care of other people's pets.

This time in Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, she takes on a five-foot iguana and its owner, feeding them and making sure they make it out of their funk. The iguana was left in the cold and its body temperature had dropped to dangerous levels when Dixie found it. The owner is ill with some unknown malady that makes his skin dimpled and blue-green.

When the owner's security guard is shot dead, Dixie gets caught up in the drama of Who Did It, all while recovering from her own "blues," the death of her husband and daughter in an car accident several years ago.

Dixie is a down to earth, gutsy main character, whose love of animals belies her tough stance toward many humans.

I'm really enjoying this book, even more than the previous pet sittery mystery by author Blaize Clement, Duplicity Dogged the Daschund.

Fright of the Iguana, book review

The Fright of the Iguana: Pet-Sitter Mystery

"And when the heck was I going to stop asking questions and do something useful?

So asks Kendra Ballantyne as she goes about solving the mystery of pet-nabbed pets while she takes care of a host of other animals and also works as a lawyer and conflict resolver.

This is from Linda O. Johnston's newest book in her Pet Sitter Mystery series featuring Kendra Ballantyne - The Fright of the Iguana.

Dogs and cats and an iguana have disappeared while under the care of members of the Petsitters Club of Southern California. Two of Kendra's charges, a 3-foot iguana and a Sharpei pup, have disappeared from the property of their owner, a high profile Hollywood film producer. Kendra is frantic to find the pets and soon discovers that other petsitters have had similar experiences - disappearing animals under their care. When one of the petsitters is found killed in one of the homes, things begin to get very serious.

The plot of the novel is clever and the sub plots are entertaining as well as informative. Conflict resolution in the legal world, the business of petsitting and pet daycare, and interesting characters made this an enjoyable cozy.

Book Review: Meow is for Murder by Linda O. Johnston

Meow is for Murder, Petsitter Mystery by Linda O. Johnston, published 2007 by Berkley

Finished that cozy mystery, Meow is for Murder, and couldn't have guessed ahead of time the person who "dunnit" or how those two Bengal cats were used to find the murderer. Clever little plot, although the deal that petsitter and lawyer Kendra makes with a suspect is unusual and somewhat unrealistic, I thought.

The suspect, Amanda, is charged with the murder of man who has been stalking her. Amanda is the ex-wife of Kendra's current love, Jeff, and a bit of a stalker herself, always showing up at Jeff's door with various and sundry requests for help and assistance. She promises to stay out of Jeff's life for good if Kendra, an amateur sleuth on top of everything else, will find the real killer and get her off the murder hook.

Here's the weird part. Amanda signs a "legal" and "binding" document saying she will be out of Jeff's life forever if Kendra proves her innocent.

In the end, Kendra finds that Jeff may not have been worth all the trouble after all and accepts a date with, here it comes....., a vet that she meets on one of her other lawyerly cases. Now, like so many of the mystery heroines these days, such as Stephanie Plum in Janet Evanovich's books, this main characer has two love interests to add sauce to the mystery.

Catch Kendra in the next book in the series to see how the new guy works out. That's how the mystery series sometimes works - a thread of romantic intrigue leads you on to the next book. Curiousity doesn't always kill the cat, but it sure makes some writers Fat Cats.

Book Review: Who's Kitten Who? by Cynthia Baxter

Who's Kitten Who?  (Reigning Dogs and Cats Mystery) by Cynthia Baxter,  December 2007.

Long Island veterinarian Jessica Popper is more than busy. Not only is she visiting clients in her mobile clinic, which she refers to as her "clinic-on-wheels," and hosting a segment of Pet People on local TV, but she has to fit in the plans of several other people.

Her friend and landlady, Betty Vandervoort, insists that Jessica try to solve the murder of actor and playwright Simon Wainwright, who is a member of an amateur theater group that
Betty has joined, and whose body was found stuffed in a trunk in a dressing room in the theater. When one of the actors decides to leave the play after the murder, Jessica is offered a small part. As a member of the group, she is now in a position to observe and interview all the cast members, the prime suspects in the murder. .

Jessica has other things to worry about as well. She is to be the maid of honor at Betty's wedding and also has to prepare for the visit of her fiance's parents. Nick's parents bring their pampered little dog Mitzi and stays with Jessica and Nick in their tiny cottage, already filled with Jessica's pets - two dogs, two cats, a talkative parrot, plus a Jackson's chameleon.

To make matters worse for Jessica, Nick objects to her detecting and her other activities, which he says take too much time away from him. Newsday reporter Forrester Sloan tries to step into Nick's shoes and into Jessica's love life while helping her in her detecting. Police lieutenant Anthony Falcone tries to discourage Jessica at every turn from interfering in the murder investigation.

In the end, after several scary moments and at least one attempt on her life, Jessica does find the killer and manages to also smooth out her personal life.

We learn a lot about theater production as well, as we follow Jessica through her rehearsals, her costume and make up sessions, and her observations on how complex lighting and scenery add to the success of a play.

Witty dialogue and interesting sub-plots make this an enjoyable, "cozy" read. This is the sixth book in the Reigning Cats and Dogs Mystery series by Cynthia Baxter.

Book Review: Murder with Peacocks by Donna Andrews

I wrote this in 1999 on the web, one of my first attempts at reviewing a book online. I identified myself simply as "A reader."

After seeing several articles by newspaper writers upset at web reviewers, I revisited my old posting, one of the first 10 or so of about 68 done by reviewers/readers at the same site on the mystery, Murder With Peacocks by Donna Andrews (1999).

Here it is.

"13 out of 15 people found the following review helpful:

A comedy of manners with peacocks (brides) - and a mystery.
July 5, 1999.

A delightful heroine, Meg, overworked, has amazing energy to organize three weddings for difficult brides-to-be, one of whom is her mother. In spite of a murder here and there and near-fatal "accidents," Meg tries to organize everything from fittings for gowns to addressing hundreds of invitations and even "renting" peacocks for her brother's wedding.

In between her hectic schedule, she tries to solve the murders as well, all the while hampered by demanding brides-to-be, relatives, an eccentric father and fatuous mother, and a host of zany characters. A fun book to read, as a mystery and as a comedy and good natured farce on weddings, their rituals, and the entanglements of a small town where almost everyone is related. Even the animals are fun - Duck, the Dog Spike, and of course, the peacocks.

The unraveling of the mystery leaves some questions unanswered, but it's fun getting all the way to the end."

Female mystery lovers who enjoy, or hate, weddings, you might enjoy reading this book.