FIRE AND DALMATIAN

The death of a cat-collecting hoarder may not be accidental in Dziomba’s third small-town detective novel in a series.

Lily Dreyfus is a successful adoption coordinator at Bassettville, New Jersey’s Forever Friends Animal Shelter, but she moonlights as an amateur sleuth. The middle-aged detective previously investigated the death of ex-Marine Pete Russo in Clues from the Canines (2022). She’s having dinner with her new boyfriend—Pete’s best friend, Jim—and their friends Melinda and Diego Skinner in neighboring Muellerville when they see smoke nearby. Mary Stewart, a caustic local hoarder of piles of papers and countless cats, is found dead inside her smoldering home. The fire is ruled accidental, but boric acid scattered in Mary’s yard points to possible foul play. Could the killer be Arthur O’Dell, a worker with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals who openly proclaims that “that woman being dead is a blessing to everyone who had to be around her”? What about Olivia Campbell and Stephanie Fanning, Mary’s married neighbors, who despair at the cats’ impact on the local bird population? Unfortunately, author Dziomba isn’t in a rush to answer these questions. Most of the book unfolds in meandering conversations in which characters recount the same slim set of clues. Reprieves from the sluggish pacing take the form of irreverent, though gratingly cutesy, chapters narrated by Crockett, one of Lily’s two dogs. The communities of Bassettville and Muellerville are charming and endearingly neighborly—every other character seems to own a small business or save adorable animals for a living. Dziomba’s scene-setting, however, is oddly rote; of the local beer culture, for instance, she writes: “People can either buy food at area restaurants to consume at the microbrewery or buy growlers of beer to drink at local BYOB restaurants. The rise of microbreweries has benefited many businesses and downtown shopping areas.” Melinda’s biracial sons are racially profiled by the local police, which adds welcome nuance to this rosy portrait. However, this subplot feels hasty and underexplored.

A pet-oriented whodunit that’s more cozy than mysterious.