Carolyn Haines

The Delaney Detective Agency takes on a case of dognapping when the beloved pet of a pet activist is stolen from her yard. Both Sarah Booth and Tinkie are pet lovers too and are going to do their best to get Jezebel back. Then another pet is stolen from another older lady.

The detective duo has lots of suspects including a shady police chief, the mayor, the second lady's ne'er-do-well grandson, and a villain who has plagued Sarah Booth for some time and is on the lam from various law show more enforcement agencies in Mississippi. Then there is the local boy who made it good in pro wrestling and might be dipping into dog fighting and drugs with maybe a side of gambling.

Things get even more tense when Sarah Booth's and Tinkie's dogs are dognapped too.

This was a fun story filled with all sorts of Southern sayings. It also features "assistance" from Sarah Booth's ghost Jitty who makes appearances as famous historical dog lovers. And her boyfriend Coleman has a large role to play too.

This is the 29th book in this series. I've only read one other, but will be putting the series on my TBR stack. show less

Sarah Booth Delany has returned to her home in Zinnia, Mississippi. After a failed career in New York, she returns to her ancestral home, Dahlia House, over thirty, unemployed and unwed. Also living at Dahlia House is Jitty, a her great-great-grandmother's nanny - and a ghost who is now haunting Sarah Booth.

Yet Sarah Booth is a 'Daddy's Girl', whose only job is to marry well and enjoy the privileges that come with it. But she is not like the others of her ilk, she is unconventional and not show more interested in marrying the first man who asks her that is rich. She returns home to Zinnia Mississippi, still unwed and now unemployed, and about to lose her ancestral home, Dahlia House. Desperate for money, she listens to Jitty, who convinces her that the quickest way to get it is to kidnap Chablis, her best friend Tinkie's dog, and then ransom him back. So she sends Tinkie a ransom note for $5000 and Tinkie, frantic, wants Sarah Booth to deliver the money and retrieve her dog. Having done this, Tinkie declares that Sarah Booth is now a PI, and hires her to find out why an ex-boyfriend, Hamilton Garrett V, has recently returned home.

What this does is unleash an entire series of events regarding a 20-year-old murder case that leads to questions nobody wants asked and threats on Sarah Booth's life. But she presses on, because by now she is immersed in the case and has some questions of her own. It doesn't help that she's attracted to the murder victim's son, who has been living abroad since the murder, and has now returned home and wants nothing more than for her to drop the whole thing.

You see, years ago, Hamilton was exiled to Europe when first his father, then his mother were killed. There are other reasons he was sent to Europe, and after setting sight on Hamilton, and immediately being drawn to him, she ultimately decides that the deep mystery surrounding his family and the reason he was sent to Europe are something she must find out. She first convinces herself it is for her friend Tinkie, but soon realizes she is doing it for herself.

While she is investigating Hamilton, she also begins investigating the two murders (under the guise of writing a fictional book), since she believes that Tinkie deserves to know the truth about the situation. Sarah Booth begins discovering secrets, and soon finds out what everyone really wants her to do is just leave it all alone and forget the past - which she is not about to do.

This book moved along at a great pace, Sarah Booth is headstrong, her conversations with Jitty are interesting, to say the least, and the descriptions of the area where she lives are colorful. Ms. Haines has a terrific way with words, and draws you deep into the delta of the story, wanting to know more.

What I really found the most interesting were the women. The way the women interacted with each other was extremely telling in how the Daddy's Girls were different, and of a different class. Sarah Booth was somewhere in the middle, now disdained by the true Daddy's Girls, but still one of them, and as such, those that weren't kept her at arm's length.

This book was delightful, the mystery well done, the characters described wonderfully. I found it all intriguing enough to want to pick up the next one immediately. I highly recommend this and can't wait to read the next in the series. show less

After 19 really solid, enjoyable books, this one tanked for me. It's still ok, hence my 3 stars, but comparatively speaking, nowhere near as good as the book that came before it.

Contributing to my general disappointment was the feeling that Haines just never got a handle on the plot. It's a really interesting one about Indian burial mounds, archeology and curses, but it never gelled and in fact went somewhat around the bend in terms of incredulity, character angst, and abuse of dues ex show more machina. The series has always had a light touch of the paranormal in Jitty, the ghost that haunts Sarah Booth, but the author charges past the lightly paranormal line, and blazes right into unbelievable miracles, and then she throws in some science fiction just to really stomp on any believability the plot may have had going for it.

I didn't hate it, and it's not generally bad; it's just not anywhere near as complex and interesting an instalment as previous books have been. Everyone gets a phone-it-in in a long running series, and it took Haines 20 books before she cashed hers in. I'm confident that should there be a 21, it will be back to the high standards of previous books.

I read this book for Halloween Bingo's New Release square. show less

Whew – I had concerns after the last book, Garland of Bones, was such a poor entry to what is normally a reliable series.

This one starts right off with a bang – a rather graphic display of domestic violence at the grand opening of Zinnia’s new public park, during a speech by a professor passionate about women’s rights. The next day, the abuser is found dead, and the police find two other murders with the exact same MO in two other cities, and the professor is a suspect in all of show more them.

The fight-the-patriarchy rhetoric was strong, and at times, way too thickly laid on. Given Sarah Booth and Tinkie’s apathy for their client, the professor, I think it was done on purpose with the idea of illustrating that too much of anything – good or bad – can have disastrous consequences. This made the rhetoric, which was mostly in the first half of the book, at least useful to the plot. It still detracted from my enjoyment overall though.

What I did appreciate an awful lot, along with the faster pace and the lighter tone, was that the author also took the time to point out that the characters series readers know and love already have quietly, and in their own unique way, ‘fought the patriarchy’ and carved out their own independence and power. Balance.

Sarah’s resident haint, Jitty, also played a far less annoying part that usual; Sarah Booth has finally, after 22 books, stopped being taken in like an idiot, by her frequent appearances as historical figures. This time around, the figures she appears as are all powerful women throughout American history, who fought the constraints of their times to achieve agency over their own lives. And all of them outlaws. One of the messages being, that before our current generations, the only way women had their own agency was to be outlaws, in one way or another. These interludes were interesting and I found myself far less impatient with them than I’ve been in the past. They felt less silly and more relevant.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that for the last few years the writing has been on the wall for American women, as the feeble, power-hungry men we helped elect have been systematically making noise about taking away a woman’s agency, but the timing of this plot feels especially prescient, as the publication of this book came almost at the exact same time as events in Texas unfolded. Because behind the scenes of this story is a new, secret, well-funded, political movement unfolding across the US, with the goal of unwinding the rights of women back to pre 1900’s, where women couldn’t work any meaningful jobs, or have control of their finances, never mind their bodies, and their husbands were legally free to ‘correct’ their behaviour as they saw fit. That bit of the story doesn’t end with a tied-up bow and a justice-wins-the-day at the end, which is fitting. The pendulum of humanity swings wide, but slow. show less