A Nose for Justice

August 9, 2010
Wings Ranch near Reno, owned by Jeep Reed, who served as a WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilot) during WWII, provides the appealing backdrop for the intriguing first in a new, canine-centered series from bestseller Brown (Cat of the Century). One of Nevada's wealthiest women, Jeep has outlived two "life partners," Daniel Marks and Dorothy Jocham, and welcomes a visit from her great-niece, former Wall Street banker Magdalene "Mags" Rogers. Suspicious explosions of local water pumps disturb their peace, along with an environmentalist's shooting "suicide" and a pump company employee's disappearance. Jeep, Mags, and their two dogs—King, a shepherd mix, and Baxter, a wire-haired dachshund—also discover a really cold corpse and, among the bones, a 19th-century Russian "Star of Guard" ring buried in Jeep's barn. The water issues subplot slows the action at times and the dogs don't have enough to do, but the search for the skeleton's identity will keep most readers turning the pages.

September 1, 2010

City dog meets country dog to solve crimes ancient and modern.

Magdalene Rogers's Wall Street life is a bust. So she and her dachshund Baxter head west to her feisty great aunt Jeep, née Magdalene Reed, who welcomes Mags to her Nevada ranch with open arms. Jeep has had quite a history. She served as a WASP (Woman Airforce Service Pilot) in World War II, had two concurrent loves, one male and one female, and now runs the ranch with her adopted son Enrique and his wife Carlotta. Her transition teaches Mags about a new lifestyle while challenging tiny Baxter to fit in with Jeep's shepherd mix, King. The pups annoy each other at first: Baxter has never even dug a hole in the dirt, and King is frustrated with the dachshund's naïveté. When Enrique unearths old bones in the horse barn, the dogs' excavation skills are put to good use. Mags teams with local Deputy Pete Meadows to research the demise of the man wearing a Russian war ring. Pete may have his hands full with more current homicides. He's almost linked a string of recent murders to a war over water rights between locals and Silver State Resource Management (SSRM). Can Baxter and King get together and protect their humans before the war for water gets too close to home?

Brown (Cat of the Century, 2010, etc.) has supplanted sassy cats with clever dogs, producing much the same results: a meandering mystery as much about ideology as anything else.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2010
Mags (for Magdalena) has left New York City, where the financial meltdown caused her to lose her banking job, and has moved to her great-aunt Jeeps ranch in Nevada, not too far away from Reno. She has brought her wirehaired dachshund Baxter, who has to get along with Jeeps German shepherdmix King. The two women and their dogs first get drawn into the conflict between Jeeps rural neighbors and Silver State Resource Management, a corporation that wants to control all the water rights in the area. They (women and dogs) investigate when SSRM pumps explode in what amounts to domestic terrorism, and then an SSRM executive disappears. This is the first in a new mystery series featuring Baxter and King and their humans; Brown narrates a good portion of the novel from the dogs point of view. The crime plot plays out at a leisurely pace, but the conflict over water rights is just as compelling as the mystery, making this a satisfying read not only for genre fans but also for anyone who cares about the environment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)