Book (not) Bingo #8
Muzzled by Eileen Brady
Making rounds to homes one wet spring morning, veterinarian Dr. Kate Turner visits an estate whose owners breed champion Cavalier King Charles spaniels. Instead of sharing traditional tea with the couple, she confronts a bloody scene of bodies and twenty-seven blue-ribbon dogs running wild.
Police initially suspect a murder-suicide, but when Dr. Kate proves the famous best-in-show champion is missing, a darker reality intrudes. She remembers her grandfather saying that there are two motives for murder-love and money. While treating local pets, Dr. Kate discovers suspects and motives everywhere in this charming town filled with people who wanted the couple dead.
Was the couple murdered for money their champion could bring to another breeder? How is their daughter, anxious to rid herself of the pampered dogs, handling the wealth she inherits? Would the celebrity filmmaker living nearby kill to end a multi-million dollar lawsuit? Did long-buried personal secrets cause the deaths? And what's going on at the office behind her back? Is Dr. Kate now in danger?
We are delighted to discover and publish first-time mystery writer Eileen Brady, D.V.M. Her characters, style, and storytelling bring authenticity and atmosphere to this new "pet noir" series.
This is a “first in series” book and also the debut novel of the author. When I noticed it as a daily deal on Amazon, the premise appealed to me, and I thought a veterinarian sleuth would come across as realistic since the author is a veterinarian. Also, as I’ve mentioned previously, I enjoy cozy mysteries featuring animals.
The book features Dr Kate Turner, a twenty-eight year old veterinarian who is on a one year assignment, filling in at a vet clinic in a small town in upstate New York. (The vet who owns the practice is on an extended vacation out of the country.) As the book opens, Kate has been on the job for four months and is just beginning to feel comfortable with the clinic’s staff and clientele when she stumbles into the scene of either a murder-suicide or a double murder. The deceaseds are an elderly couple who bred and showed champion Cavalier King Charles spaniels.
The plot is fairly typical of cozy mysteries. The police label the deaths of the elderly couple “suspicious” but seem inclined to let the case languish as a probable murder-suicide. Kate, however, keeps seeing and hearing tidbits of information on her rounds that make her suspect murder, and she begins “investigating” on her own.
Overall, I’d probably give this book two and a half or even three stars out of five. The mechanics are reasonably sound, although there are some typographical errors. The author, being a veterinarian, obviously knows a lot about animals and veterinary medicine, and the parts of the story focused on those areas are engaging. The mystery is well-plotted. However, the good parts of the book are overshadowed by the need for better editing. Someone really needed to sit the (first time) author down and point out a few things.
One, the author tended to wander away from the plot into long, drawn out bits of scene description and backstory that added nothing to the book beyond padding the word count. Many of those should have been cut.
Two, there were some contradictory elements. For example, it was briefly explained toward the beginning of the book that Kate had taken the year-long assignment in upstate NY to get away from her former boss, also a veterinarian. The boss, Jason, had gone through a painful divorce, and Kate had spent months “mooning over him” while being his emotional support system and also “giving him space” to get over his divorce and be ready to move on … and then she was devastated when he fell for and started a relationship with a new client instead of her. But halfway through the book, Jason showed up to see Kate, and suddenly he was her ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with the nineteen year old office receptionist. Either way, he was portrayed as a jerk, but the contradiction in backstory bothered me. An editor should have caught that.
Third, there were scenes in the book that seemed to have no purpose. For example, midway through the book, Kate became concerned that she might be a suspect, because she’d found the elderly couple and later been on the scene of a possibly related shooting. So she went to see a local lawyer, not sure whether she should be getting legal advice. The lawyer was portrayed as sleazy, misogynistic, and patronizing - but the chapter ended with him saying she definitely needed a lawyer and asking for a $5000 retainer. The next chapter opened the following morning with no indication of whether she retained him. Probably not, since he was never mentioned again in the book, but who knows? And what exactly was his purpose?
Fourth, there needed to be some kind of transition from the point in the story where Kate was shaken by finding the two bodies but decided to put it out of her mind and focus on her job … and the point where she was consumed by the urge to figure out what happened and plotting “her investigation.” It seemed that in one chapter, she was determined to leave the investigation to the professionals and in the next chapter, she was “on the case.” There needed to be some kind of explanation.
And finally, and this is a personal preference rather than an editing issue, but I didn’t like the fact that Kate, in her amateur investigation, came across important information that she withheld from the police. The biggest example of this was the champion stud dog, Charles Too. Shortly after the murders, Kate examined the dogs on the deceaseds’ property and was sure Charles Too was missing from the group. (She knew because she had treated him recently and had a distinctive shaved area.) However, she accepted it when the police told her she was mistaken … and when the deceaseds’ daughter sold “Charles Too” for a huge amount of money, she provided the health certificate. (This contradicts the Amazon blurb above, which is inaccurate.) But, meanwhile, about ten days after the murders, Kate’s vet tech found a emaciated, injured dog by the side of the road, and Kate treated him and kept him as her personal pet. (She said she “adopted” him.) Even though she recognized him as the actual Charles Too. He was (or would have been) a key piece of evidence in a murder investigation, but she decided he’d been through enough and thought if she kept his hair cut short no one would ever recognize him so it was okay to keep him. Being an animal lover, I can kind of see the motivation … but it really wasn’t okay. And I honestly can’t believe no one would have recognized him or at least realized he was a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, not a mutt.
Anyway, I’ve written a lot more negative things than positive things here, but the book wasn’t “hopelessly” bad. A good editor, and experience, might help a lot. In fact, I’m giving some thought to ordering the next book in the series just to see whether there’s any improvement in the writing. I haven’t decided yet, but it’s a possibility … although I’m not sure whether that’s because I really see potential or just because of the number of really bad books I’ve read recently.