Fur Boys: Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries, #6

There’s no end to the drama when Lia stumbles on a dead diva. Talented, charismatic Dr. Geoffrey Lawrence has manipulated students and staff at Hopewell Music Conservatory for years, destroying lives and careers at whim. No one knows this better than Hannah Kleemeyer, the school admin who plays nanny for the professor’s trio of adorable dogs. Lia’s mural commission at Hopewell and her friendship with Hannah place her at the center of the drama when the Machiavellian voice professor is murdered, drama heightened by the theatrical tendencies of the suspects and further complicated by the terms of the professor’s will. The solution to Lawrence’s murder lies with his many victims, but the detectives assigned to the case are more suited to rousting gang-bangers than eliciting shameful secrets. Meanwhile, a mysterious informant is determined to involve Lia’s beau, Detective Peter Dourson. It’s a case Peter can’t touch now that Cincinnati has created a centralized unit to handle homicides. With Peter hamstrung by departmental politics and the assigned detectives barking up the wrong tree, it will take Lia and her dog park friends to unravel the truth. (75,000 words) When a Machiavellian voice professor has his school in a stranglehold, Who doesnt want to silence him? Meet Buddy, Dasher, and Rory, three adoring fur boys often in the care of Hannah, the ever-efficient admin at Hopewell Music Academy, site of Lias latest mural commission. Hannah can juggle anything the academy tosses at her, except the voice professor who owns the fur boys and whose demoralizing and career-crushing ways are the dark underbelly of the prestigious academy. When Lia and Peter trip over the the professors corpse, its impossible to find someone who doesnt want him dead. Good thing its not Peters case. Or it wouldnt be, if not for a mysterious informant determined to drag him in. With Peter hamstrung by departmental politics, its time for Lia and the dog park gang step in. (about 73,000 words)