Book Review: Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund by Blaize Clement

Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund is the second installment in the Dixie Hemingway Mystery series by the late Blaize Clement. In the series, Dixie, a former law enforcement officer is now a pet sitter in Sarasota, Florida. During her pet sitting duties, she finds herself discovering dead bodies and ending up  in the middle of the investigation.

In this book, Dixie is walking a dachshund when the dog finds a body. Dixie is once again in the middle of the case, at times working with Lieutenant Guidry who is handsome (probably not as handsome as me) and a bit mysterious. Dixie, not able to fully escape her law enforcement past, begins asking questions and ends up being chased by a psychopathic killer.

This was a pretty good book, but my one complaint is there were dogs in it but no cats! *sigh* There better be cats in the next book!

Speaking of the next book, I plan on reading the entire series. There is going to be one more Dixie Hemingway Mystery published (the seventh installment) that Ms. Clement wrote before her passing. After that, it is planned that her son will carry on the series. I hope he writes about cats.

Readpawty Review of Murder Past Due

Murder Past Due by Miranda James is one of the books I read for the upcoming #readpawty on Twitter. It is a cozy mystery written under a pseudonym. The author's real name is Dean James, author of the Simon Kirby-Jones mystery series. For this series, Cat in the Stacks, James took on a female name.

In "Murder Past Due" Charlie Harris is a librarian who takes his cat, a Maine Coon named Diesel, with him everywhere, walking him on a harness and leash. An old classmate, Godfrey Priest, comes back to town to be honored for being a best-selling novelist, but ends up dead-the victim of a brutal murder. Charlie is asked by the lead investigator's mother to poke around for information to help her daughter solve the case. As it turns out, the investigator doesn't really need the help and Charlie (already on her bad side) seems to only irritate her.

The story has several potential killers, all with motives to murder the not-so-nice author. There are a couple of twists, but nothing that is all too surprising. Diesel is ever-present throughout the story, greeting people and hanging out with Charlie.

The most noticeable difference between this cozy and others I have read is that the main character is a man. Typically, the antagonist is a woman in cozies, so this was a change. Also, the main character didn't actually end up solving the crime in this book. It was nice to have things mixed up a bit from other cozies I have read, instead of the same format I have read previously.

If you are a cozy mystery fan, you will probably enjoy the book. I know I did!

Another #ReadPawty Book

I read two books for this month's #readpawty on Twitter. The first one was "Homer's Odyssey" by Gwen Cooper. You can read my review of it here. The second one was a cozy mystery called "Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter" by Blaize Clement.

The cat sitter in the title is Dixie Hemingway. Dixie was a deputy in the local sheriff's department when her life was turned upside down. She left her law enforcement career to become a pet sitter and leave her former life behind. On one of her routine assignments checking on a cat named Ghost whose owner hired Dixie to watch her pet while she was out of town, Dixie discovers a dead body face down in the cat's water dish. All signs point to Dixie as a suspect; she had a key to the house where the body was found, nobody had seen her on her early morning assignments and she was already looked upon as a bit unstable in the community.

Dixie uses her skills she developed in law enforcement to dig deeper into the mystery of the dead man and Ghost's missing owner. Her questions come naturally, as does her ability to read people. Soon, she is getting in further than she should, but she can't stop the nagging thoughts about the case until everything finally becomes clear, with a little assistance from Ghost. (Of course she couldn't do it without the cat!)

Throughout the book, Dixie shows compassion for all the animals on her watch, but indicates that she doesn't want one of her own. Because of the recent upheaval in her life, Dixie can't seem to get close to anybody, including a pet. I bet if she gave a shelter kitty a chance, she would see it's worth it, but that's just my opinion! MOL.

The only thing I really didn't like about the book was how it was wrapped up after the case was solved. There were a lot of loose ends that I had to make assumptions about and I would rather have had some more details about the characters I had gotten to know in the story. I would have liked to have seen more details about Ghost especially, both during the story and at the end, but I guess it wasn't a book about a kitty, it just had a kitty in it. Overall, it was a fun mystery and I will check out the next book in the series, "Duplicity Dogged The Dachshund".