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Book 27, 2026

Murder at the Harvest Moon Fair by Gurwinder Singh

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


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I finally slogged through the rest of Murder at the Harvest Moon Fair, by Gurwinder Singh, this evening. It’s billed as the first in the author’s “Amateur Sleuth Dog mystery” series. The main character in this one is baker Hannah Miller and her basset hound, Biscuit.

Ever since she fell off a ladder and hit her head, Hannah can hear her dog, Biscuit, speaking in her mind. This peculiar ability comes in handy when someone is murdered at the annual Harvest Moon Fair and Hannah’s brother, Caleb, is framed for the crime. Determined to clear Caleb’s name, Hannah follows Biscuit as he sniffs out clues and leads. What they find is a web of lies and deceit that has its roots in the big city.

Oof. Reading this was painful. I’ve read one other book by this author and commented on instances of repetitiveness, but this particular book took repetitiveness to a whole new low. From about chapter 10 on, the first several paragraphs of each chapter were virtually the same. Hannah is full-named throughout the story, Biscuit repeats the exact same lines over and over, Hannah’s daughter, Sarah, has purple-streaked hair, which was mentioned in each chapter, every time Hannah was getting somewhere with questioning someone, there was a commotion (a shout, a scream) that caused everyone to go running to see what it was, the action kept ending up in an old barn on the mill road, Hannah kept crouching to ruffle Biscuit’s “scruffy fur” (Scruffy? Basset hounds are sleek!), whereupon she stood up and dusted flour off her jeans...every time. Several times, when confronting a bad guy (and how the hell many were there?!), she’d brandish a rolling pin. It was like a cartoon, where characters produce an umbrella or a sledgehammer out of nowhere. This was so awful and repetitive that there is no way a human could have written it. I smell AI, and I’m calling BS.

Favorite lines: “He’s got a temper like a bull with a burr.”

The story was terrible and deserves no stars. I am begrudgingly giving it one.