The Puffin of Death

August 10, 2015
Webb’s satisfying fourth Gunn Zoo mystery (after 2013’s The Llama of Death) takes California zookeeper Theodora “Teddy” Bentley to Iceland. Her mission to pick up an orphaned polar bear cub for the zoo’s new northern exhibit takes a detour when she stumbles on Simon Parr—a loud-mouth womanizer who won millions in the lottery and has treated his Arizona bird-watching club to a trip to Iceland—lying face down in a puffin burrow with a bullet in his head. While Chief Insp. Thorvaald Haraldsson warns her to back off when another bird-watcher is found dead, Teddy lies her way into the club and, at the urging of Parr’s famous romance-author wife, investigates the shady pasts of its members. Iceland’s rugged and sometimes dangerous landscape provides atmosphere, while Magnus, the polar bear cub, appears just often enough to remind us why Teddy’s in Iceland. Webb skillfully keeps the reader guessing right to the dramatic conclusion.

September 1, 2015
A zookeeper is sent to Iceland to bring home new animals only to find herself involved in yet another murder case. Theodora "Teddy" Bentley is off to pick up a polar bear cub, a pair of puffins, and two Icelandic foxes for the new Northern Climes exhibit at the Gunn Zoo in California. On the plane over, Teddy sees a fight within a group of birdwatchers from Phoenix, little knowing she'll soon be entangled in their problems. She's staying with zookeeper Bryndis Sigurdsdottir, who picks her up at the airport, and the next day the two take a trip to a seaside village, where they stumble over the body of Simon Parr, whose record-setting lottery winnings financed the all-expenses-paid trip for the members of his birding group. Parr was married to bestselling author Elizabeth St. John, who's also a birder. When Bryndis' sometimes-boyfriend Ragnar Eriksson is arrested because he had been in a bar fight with Parr, she begs Teddy, who has solved murders before (The Llama of Death, 2013, etc.), to investigate. Teddy gains easy access to the birders when former model Dawn Talley asks her to pretend to be an old friend and prove her husband, Ben, a birder who had some nasty arguments with Parr and has no alibi, is innocent. When Dawn ends up dead in the harbor, Inspector Thorvaald Haraldsson warns Teddy in the strongest terms to keep her pretty nose out of his investigation. But Teddy is not to be deterred and finds that everyone in the group is hiding secrets, many of them criminal, and at least two of the woman had affairs with Parr. Between taking care of Magnus, the adorable orphan bear cub, and the other animals, she manages to find time to snoop-which puts her right in the killer's cross hairs. Plenty of animal lore and descriptions of Iceland's unearthly beauty and culture make up for a mystery that, although filled with red herrings, is not hard to solve.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2015

California zookeeper Theodora Bentley travels to Iceland to pick up animals for a new exhibit but must put her investigative skills to use when two American birdwatchers are killed. The fourth book (The Llama of Death) in this charming series doesn't fail to please. Teddy is delightful as she copes with the Icelandic penchant for partying hard.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2015
Zookeeper Theodora Teddy Bentley receives an unexpected assignment: travel to Iceland to pick up an orphaned polar-bear cub for the new Northern Climes exhibit at California's Gunn Zoo. Shortly after arriving, Teddy and her Icelandic-zookeeper hostess find a man's body on top of a puffin burrow. The man, an American bird-watcher and lottery winner, Simon Parr, was treating his whole birder club to the Iceland trip, but his largesse seems not to have been universally admired. When another member of the group turns up dead and Teddy narrowly misses being crushed in a rock fall, the Icelander detective in charge of the case, who had previously allowed Teddy to do a little snooping, forbids her from further participation. Naturally, she ignores him. The exotic locale, the animal lore, and a nice overlay of Icelandic culture and tradition provide an enticing frame story for this solid mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)