Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof

October 27, 2008
Ex-deputy Dixie Hemingway still mourns the loss of her young daughter and cop husband in a freak accident three years earlier, but takes solace in her pet-sitting job in Siesta Key, Fla., in Clement’s thoughtful and at times somber fourth animal-themed cozy (after 2008’s Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues
). Eager for friendship, Dixie forms an immediate bond with an attractive new neighbor, Laura Halston, who has a cat named Leo. When someone stabs Laura to death in the shower, Dixie suspects Laura’s soon-to-be ex-husband, “a sadistic surgeon” skilled with a scalpel. As Dixie’s new sweetie, sexy homicide detective Lt. Jean-Pierre Guidry, investigates, surprising information comes to light that will challenge everything she knows about Laura. Some readers may find the subplot involving Maizie, a seizure assistance dog for a boy undergoing brain surgery, more compelling than the somewhat predictable murder story.

November 1, 2008
Leonardo da Vinci and a girl masquerading as his apprentice team up for the second time (The Queen ' s Gambit, 2008) to solve murders in Castle Sforza.

Da Vinci, the ultimate Renaissance man, has found time between inventing the submarine and painting the Mona Lisa to solve mysteries for the Duke of Milan. When a pretty young servant of the contessa falls to her death, Leonardo the Florentine realizes instantly that her death was no accident. But despite his genius, Leonardo, that master of the human form, has failed to recognize that his faithful apprentice and crack investigator Dino is really Delfina, a girl pulling a Yentl, despite the fact that Dino is supposedly intimate enough with the Master to know his sleeping habits and the contents of his notebooks. To seek out the truth among the serving women, Leonardo disguises Dino as a girl (Delfina becomes Dino becomes Delfina), where she suspects, yet is magnetically drawn to, the dashing, dastardly captain of the guard. When another death thickens the mystery, Delfina must confront her divided loyalties and uncover the truth. This wildly implausible tale unfolds in a style both florid and repetitive, with adverbs on pointless parade and ham-fisted reminders of events related just pages before. By the halfway point, the plot quickens enough to provide a welcome distraction from the stylistic infelicities, but those blunders never let up.

Amateur and utterly unbelievable.

(COPYRIGHT (2008) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2008
Former cop-turned-pet sitter Dixie Hemingway ("Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues") has gone numb since the deaths of her husband and her three-year-old daughter. Upon meeting Laura Halston, she thinks she's made a new friend, but there is something strange about Laura. When she is murdered, Dixie must investigate. A side plot concerns a young boy and his medical difficulties that require him to have a seizure alert dog. In her fourth outing, Dixie begins to relate to people again, but Clement loses sight of the need for tight plotting. Readers who enjoy Carol Lea Benjamin's dog mysteries might like this one. [Library marketing campaign.]

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.