From Publishers Weekly
Few readers, other than Conant's most devoted fans, will yap happily at her latest Dog Lover's mystery (after The Barker Street Regulars). Canine-crusading sleuth Holly Winter has signed a contract for a book of photographs about the famous Morris and Essex Dog Shows. In researching the events, she encounters an elderly man, B. Robert Motherway, who attended the shows as a youth. Interviewing him, Holly is introduced to his disquieting household: a son and daughter-in-law who are treated like servants, an unseen and deathly ill wife and a haughty grandson. When seemingly natural death and then outright murder visit Motherway family members, Holly pokes her nose in to scent out the truth. With the help of some anonymous letters and her shrewd friend Althea, Holly pieces together the dangerous secrets behind the Motherways' facade of patrician privilege. Canine lore and Conant's proselytizing against evil dog-breeding practices tend to swamp the meager but melodramatic plot, and her villains are so hazily sketched that readers might wonder how they engender any fear. The Barker Street Regulars was a much more accomplished story than this; hopefully Conant's next will be, too. Agent, Deborah Schneider.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From
Holly Winter, a Boston dog trainer, writer, and sleuth, has a contract to write a book about Rockefeller heiress Geraldine R. Dodge and her pre^-World War II Morris and Essex dog shows. In researching the book, Holly is drawn into a murder, a case of domestic abuse, and evidence of a Nazi spy ring. This twelfth Holly Winter mystery is filled with facts about dog breeding as well as training how-tos. Conant continues to develop her human and canine characters and to reveal the wonderful museums, parks and cemeteries of Boston. Unfortunately, this work is not as strong as The Barker Street Irregulars ; Conant has trouble weaving together the disparate story lines. Recommend it to devoted fans of Conant and other dog mysteries, but Lanier's Ten Little Bloodhounds (see review, p.1481) is a better example of the canine crime subgenre. John Rowen