Author: J.C. Eaton
Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781496724557
Kensington Publishing
299 Pages
$6.69; $6.36 Amazon
February 25, 2020
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The holiday season has arrived and bookkeeper/amateur sleuth, Sophie "Phee" Kimball, would love nothing more than to enjoy the comforts of her new home with her detective boyfriend near Arizona's Sun City West. Instead, her mother Harriet wants to showcase her chiweenie-chihuahua-dachshund Streetman in the Precious Pooches Holiday Extravaganza costume events. The festivities begin in October and end on St. Patrick's Day -- with the winner starring in the St. Patrick's Day parade. But things quickly turn an awful shade of green when Streetman uncovers a dead body under a tarp-covered grill in the neighbor's yard.
The victim is Cameron Tully, a seafood distributor working out of Phoenix, who died from ingesting a toxic sago palm leaf. Before the police can even find a motive and suspect, another Precious Pooch owner nearly dies from the same poison. With Harriet believing someone's targeting her and Streetman because of the costume contests, Phee will need a potful of Irish luck to sniff out a killer...
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Sophie "Phee" Kimball works for a private investigation firm in Phoenix as their bookkeeper. Her boyfriend Marshall is one of the investigators, and they have recently rediscovered each other after once working together in Mankato, Minnesota. Now they're gearing up to move from their respective small places into a larger home, and between that and work, Phee's been pretty busy.
But one night while visiting her mother Harriet, Harriet's dog Streetman keeps running into the neighbor's yard and pulls at their grill tarp. When Harriet tries to stop him, she thinks he's uncovering boxes. But Phee notices the "boxes" are shoes, and they're attached to a human body. When the police arrive, no one knows who the victim is, but all Phee can learn from them is that he didn't live anywhere near them, so she hopes to calm down Harriet from thinking there's a serial killer on the loose.
At least the owners of the home are in another state, because they're snowbirds. But when Phee's employer is called in to help, it's discovered how the man died, but the question is still who killed him and why. Soon Phee finds herself part of the investigation - as usual - and between finding out what information she can, she's still in the process of moving and having to attend all her mother's dog's contests. But when one of the owners of a dog contestant falls ill at the dog show, Phee begins to wonder if the two cases aren't tied together. What she finds isn't what she expects at all, and solving the case may not be as easy as she expects...
I have read every book in this series and I think this might be one of my favorites. Phee's mother Harriet is hilarious -- she thinks there's a serial killer around every corner, and I think if she were my mother I'd have constant headaches from rolling my eyes all the time. Her entire life is her dog, Streetman, a Chiweenie, and now she's entered him in holiday costume contests that she's engaged her friend Shirley, a retired milliner, to make for him. Each costume is more elaborate than the next; but since she's up against a snob of the worst sort, Harriet is willing to put a capital B in bling to win.
When they find the dead man, Phee thinks he was killed somewhere else and moved there because the killer knew the homeowners would be out of town. But finding out who killed him and why won't be easy. Once she and the investigators - Nate and Marshall - start digging for information, they find a connection to someone else in the Sun City retirement community, and things start to heat up. Now, with little to go on, that means Phee once again has to question the retirees about their friends, which she's not looking forward to.
It all comes to a head in the least likeliest of places, and Phee figures it out in a sudden 'aha' moment that puts everything together. But I was surprised that the killer wasn't who I expected it to be, yet if you listen to the dialogue, the clues are there. All the threads are woven together nicely, and the ending is humorous, but totally expected. Highly recommended.
More on J.C. Eaton's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/e/j-c-eaton/
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