Evil Breeding 2000

From Publishers Weekly Few readers, other than Conant's most devoted fans, will yap happily at her latest Dog Lover's mystery (after The Barker Street Regulars). Canine-crusading sleuth Holly Winter has signed a contract for a book of photographs about the famous Morris and Essex Dog Shows. In researching the events, she encounters an elderly man, B. Robert Motherway, who attended the shows as a youth. Interviewing him, Holly is introduced to his disquieting household: a son and daughter-in-law who are treated like servants, an unseen and deathly ill wife and a haughty grandson. When seemingly natural death and then outright murder visit Motherway family members, Holly pokes her nose in to scent out the truth. With the help of some anonymous letters and her shrewd friend Althea, Holly pieces together the dangerous secrets behind the Motherways' facade of patrician privilege. Canine lore and Conant's proselytizing against evil dog-breeding practices tend to swamp the meager but melodramatic plot, and her villains are so hazily sketched that readers might wonder how they engender any fear. The Barker Street Regulars was a much more accomplished story than this; hopefully Conant's next will be, too. Agent, Deborah Schneider. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Holly Winter, a Boston dog trainer, writer, and sleuth, has a contract to write a book about Rockefeller heiress Geraldine R. Dodge and her pre^-World War II Morris and Essex dog shows. In researching the book, Holly is drawn into a murder, a case of domestic abuse, and evidence of a Nazi spy ring. This twelfth Holly Winter mystery is filled with facts about dog breeding as well as training how-tos. Conant continues to develop her human and canine characters and to reveal the wonderful museums, parks and cemeteries of Boston. Unfortunately, this work is not as strong as The Barker Street Irregulars ; Conant has trouble weaving together the disparate story lines. Recommend it to devoted fans of Conant and other dog mysteries, but Lanier's Ten Little Bloodhounds (see review, p.1481) is a better example of the canine crime subgenre. John Rowen Dog's Life Columnist Holly Winter Has Just Landed A Plum Contract To Write A Book On Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge's Legendary Pre-world War Ii Dog Shows. Holly Arranges To Interview One Of The Last Living Participants In Those Fabulously Opulent And Exclusive Shows: Canine Fancier B. Robert Motherway. But There's Something Decidedly Unsettling About The Gracious Old Gent's Imposing Home With Its Acres Of Kennels. His Dying Wife Wails Piteously In An Upstairs Room, His Servants Are His Sullen Son And His Downtrodden Daughter-in-law, And His Favorite German Shepherd Dog Has An Ill-bred Snarl. Meanwhile, Holly's Mail Is Laced With Anonymous Packages-old Photographs, Letters In German, And A Brochure On Pills For Listless Pooches. Nothing Makes Sense Until A Garroted Body Is Found In A Nearby Cemetery. Suddenly Holly And Her Alaskan Malamutes, Rowdy And Kimi, Are On A Seventy-year-old Trail Of Deception, Decadence, And Death. And Either They Unearth The Skeletons Or Join Them. From The Paperback Edition. A mystery novel that turns into an exposé of evil dog-breeding practices. The heroine is sleuth Holly Winter and she stumbles on a murder while researching a book on famous dog shows