Oct. 1st, 2021

chez_jae: (Books)
Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund (A Dixie Hemingway Mystery, #2)Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund by Blaize Clement

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Last night, I finished reading Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund, by Blaize Clement. It's the second book in the "Dixie Hemingway" cozy mystery series. Story is told in first person point of view by former-deputy-turned-pet sitter, Dixie.

While Dixie is walking Mame, an elderly dachshund in her care, the dog gets loose and begins digging in a pile of mulch. Mame unearths a body, leading Dixie to call the police. She is stunned to realize she recognizes the victim, Conrad Ferrelli--a man whose Doberman Dixie has taken care of before--and that she waved at Conrad's car shortly before Mame found his body. Now a killer believes that Dixie saw him and can identify him, even though Dixie simply assumed it was Conrad. She intends to stay out of it and let the police investigate, but when there's an attempt on her life, Dixie is no longer content to stay on the sidelines. Someone is out to get her, and Dixie isn't going to be a sitting duck.

Excellent story! Dixie is such a flawed character--hurting and vulnerable, yet still tough as nails. She doesn't have much to laugh about in life, but her wry sense of humor comes through in the narration. Other characters were fully realized, including some rather smarmy and disgusting villains, any of whom could be the killer and all of whom deserved the same fate. Even the pets' characters are portrayed well, from the brooding Mame to the sober and grieving Reggie. The plot was smooth as butter, taking Dixie from her rounds as a pet sitter to her spontaneous visits to people whom she hoped could shed light on Conrad's life and death. I adored her interactions with her brother, Michael, and his partner, Paco.

Favorite lines:
♦ She growled. It was her finger and she wasn't giving it up.
♦ "You're a very good girl, and everything's okay." That's what we all want to hear, that we're good and that everything's okay.
♦ If I ran the world--and God knows I could do a better job of it than the yahoos doing it now--any leader who sent troops off to fight would have to march at the head of the ranks. That would bring about world peace in about four weeks.

ExpandMore under the cut )

I can't say it was a delightful story, as it was fraught with murder and danger and people who are too awful to live. However, it was compelling and it captured my interest. Five stars.
chez_jae: (Books)
Snow Way Out (Snow Globe Shop Mystery, #1)Snow Way Out by Christine Husom

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



At lunch today, I finished the book I'd taken to the office. It was Snow Way Out, which is the first book in the "Snow Globe Shop" mystery series by Christine Husom. Main character is Camryn "Cami" Brooks, who has taken over her parents' curio shop that sells snow globes.

Cami and her friend, Pinky, own and operate a curio shop and a coffee shop that are connected by an open, arched doorway. The two of them decide to host a class one evening to teach participants how to make snow globes. Afterward, Cami finds a snow globe in her shop she swears she's never seen before. It depicts a man sleeping on a park bench. While walking home that evening, she comes across an eerily similar scene in the park, only the man on the bench is dead. She admits to Assistant Chief Clinton Lonsbury that she'd seen a globe like that in her shop. Now Cami finds herself under suspicion, along with both of her BFFs--Pinky and Erin. Pinky, because she's missing a knife from her shop, and Erin, because she has a bad history with the murder victim. Cami begins trying to piece clues together on her own, in hopes of finding the real killer before someone else ends up dead.

The story was entertaining but rather ordinary. Characters were likable enough, and the plot moved along in a sensible fashion, but nothing about it really gripped me. I liked the unusual setting of a curio shop, but the fact that the romantic interest ended up being a police officer was a yawner. Overdone! I also didn't like that Clint asked Cami to go with him when he drove to another town to question the parents of a suspect who'd gone missing. Once again, no cop is going to invite a civilian on an investigation. Ever. The author threw some clever twists in to keep things mildly interesting.

Favorite line: I asked myself for the one-thousandth time how I had ever gotten into such a pickle...

Three or four stars? Let's put it to the
ExpandTrope Test )

Wow, that's about as even as you can get. Hmm...I'm going to give this an average score of three.

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