A frothy, fun series debut with little reliance on mystery to keep things interesting; insert your own cat pun here.
The death of a questionable dog breeder implicates a pet groomer who’s forced to depend on her telepathic cat for help.
To celebrate the opening of Mimi Lee's LA pet grooming business, Hollywoof, her sister, Alice, gives her a ball of white fluff, a cat Mimi promptly dubs Marshmallow. While her personal and business interests focus mainly on dogs, Mimi can’t help but be charmed by Marshmallow, who objects to his name and his characterization as anything other than sleek and elegant. And Mimi is all too aware of Marshmallow’s reluctance to take on the cuddly pet role because he’s somehow able to telegraph his thoughts into her head. Before Mimi can think too much about whether her conversations with her cat mean that she’s losing her mind, she has to rely on her connection to Marshmallow to solve a crime. After store benefactor Pixie St. James has sent several high-end clients to Hollywoof, Mimi realizes that their expensive Chihuahuas are the victims of health issues traceable to cut-rate breeder Russ Nolan’s shady practices. After confronting Russ, Mimi learns that he’s been killed and that the lead detective on the case is sure Mimi is to blame. As if this weren’t trouble enough, Alice’s new principal is determined to cut her position as a kindergarten teacher, and Mimi and Alice’s Ma, a fiercely opinionated Malaysian woman, calls on Mimi to save Alice’s job. The stress of Russ’ death and Alice’s predicament makes Mimi unable to concentrate on her romantic interest, neighbor Josh Akana, until she realizes that maybe his new job as an attorney can help keep her on the right side of the law. But Mimi’s number one hope is Marshmallow, who can communicate with the pups Russ was raising and possibly figure out the real killer before Mimi is arrested.
A frothy, fun series debut with little reliance on mystery to keep things interesting; insert your own cat pun here.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0499-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on...
After five adventures for Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and his off-again lover Angela Gennaro (Prayers for Rain, 1999, etc.), Lehane tries his hand at a crossover novel that’s as dark as any of Patrick’s cases.
Even the 1975 prologue is bleak. Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus are playing, or fighting, outside Sean’s parents’ house in the Point neighborhood of East Buckingham when a car pulls up, one of the two men inside flashes a badge, and Sean and Jimmy’s friend Dave Boyle gets bundled inside, allegedly to be driven home to his mother for a scolding but actually to get kidnapped. Though Dave escapes after a few days, he never really outlives his ordeal, and 25 years later it’s Jimmy’s turn to join him in hell when his daughter Katie is shot and beaten to death in the wilds of Pen Park, and State Trooper Sean, just returned from suspension, gets assigned to the case. Sean knows that both Dave and Jimmy have been in more than their share of trouble in the past. And he’s got an especially close eye on Jimmy, whose marriage brought him close to the aptly named Savage family and who’s done hard time for robbery. It would be just like Jimmy, Sean knows, to ignore his friend’s official efforts and go after the killer himself. But Sean would be a lot more worried if he knew what Dave’s wife Celeste knows: that hours after catching sight of Katie in the last bar she visited on the night of her death, Dave staggered home covered with somebody else’s blood. Burrowing deep into his three sorry heroes and the hundred ties that bind them unbearably close, Lehane weaves such a spellbinding tale that it’s easy to overlook the ramshackle mystery behind it all.
An undisciplined but powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on his characters’ heads.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-16316-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”
Once again, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett gets mixed up in a killing whose principal suspect is his old friend Nate Romanowski, whose attempts to live off the grid keep breaking down in a series of felony charges.
If Judge Hewitt hadn’t bent over to pick up a spoon that had fallen from his dinner table, the sniper set up nearly a mile from his house in the gated community of the Eagle Mountain Club would have ended his life. As it was, the victim was Sue Hewitt, leaving the judge alive and free to rail and threaten anyone he suspected of the shooting. Incoming Twelve Sleep County Sheriff Brendan Kapelow’s interest in using the case to promote his political ambitions and the judge’s inability to see further than his nose make them the perfect targets for a frame-up of Nate, who just wants to be left alone in the middle of nowhere to train his falcons and help his bride, Liv Brannon, raise their baby, Kestrel. Nor are the sniper, the sheriff, and the judge Nate’s only enemies. Orlando Panfile has been sent to Wyoming by the Sinaloan drug cartel to avenge the deaths of the four assassins whose careers Nate and Joe ended last time out (Wolf Pack, 2019). So it’s up to Joe, with some timely data from his librarian wife, Marybeth, to hire a lawyer for Nate, make sure he doesn’t bust out of jail before his trial, identify the real sniper, who continues to take an active role in the proceedings, and somehow protect him from a killer who regards Nate’s arrest as an unwelcome complication. That’s quite a tall order for someone who can’t shoot straight, who keeps wrecking his state-issued vehicles, and whose appalling mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren Hand, has returned from her latest European jaunt to suck up all the oxygen in Twelve Sleep County to hustle some illegal drugs for her cancer-stricken sixth husband. But fans of this outstanding series will know better than to place their money against Joe.
One protest from an outraged innocent says it all: “This is America. This is Wyoming.”Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53823-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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