Murder in the Middle Pasture #4 (Hank the Cowdog)

This book is hard to review as my opinion of it might be different than if I hadn't read it shortly after reading through the first three in the series. I just feel that it is a little more dry and not as innovative as the first three were. It keeps rehashing a lot of the same themes that were repeated in the previous books, but in this book it was a little more apparent that characters were being brought back just for the sake of familiarity rather than to advance the plot. This book might still be funny if one were randomly picking a book from the series to start reading from, but it just doesn't hold up as original after reading a few others; the well appeared to have run dry for a spell. I also felt that some of the subject matter veered a little more towards the adult, including a joke about a cowboy muttering under his breath about "your Sunday britches." I still like this series, but I think that from the perspective of a child reading through them and growing in literacy skills and critical thinking as they progressed through the books, this one would not seem very rewarding of their development. It was especially easy to figure out the plot result in this one, which ended up just making Hank's character start to look more and more stupid. ( )