Customer Reviews

Hair Of The Dog: A Melanie Travis Mystery

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I read this author for the first time I was looking for a writer who writes like the Cat Who series. In Laurien Berenson, I found a writer who is more serious, better prepared, and knows the show dog world. I think she is getting better with each book.

Melanie, Melanie, Melanie,

What is going on here? You are on your summer vacation, and instead of enjoying life at the beach with your son and your paramour, you actually manage to get asked by a murder suspect to help in finding the murderer. You try to beg off, but Alicia insists and you are such a sucker that you take over for the police (speaking of which, were are they in this story?) and start asking questions at each dog show that you attend over the coming weeks. This leads directly to another murder and then you solve the mystery after being threatened yourself. What a way to spend a summer vacation, eh?

This story line plods along. There is no excitement and nothing seems to happen except for descriptions of dog shows and what happens at them plus a few descriptions of some unusual dog breeds plus a lot of conversations with people who are part of the dog show scene. There are some red herrings that the sleuth falls into chasing and some mildly interesting twists in terms of how sexually active the professional dog handlers appear to be (everyone is having affairs with people who are NOT their spouses).

The mystery, when it is eventually solved, involves someone who is determined to get his way and develops this really strange and really weird method of getting the people he is interested in to convert to his way of thinking. To my way of thinking, this was a very weak point for this book as it was so convoluted and unbelievable!

In other Melanie Travis books there was always some humor and some interesting twists in her virtual life that raised the overall book score. This one is totally bereft of anything like that. Too bad.

I am hoping that this is a momentary aberation and that future volumes will be better.

Loved this whole series of books. The heroine is a single Mom who is pushed into the world of dog shows by a loveable dog obsessed Aunt. Set on the East Coast, each book continues to expand Melanie's relationships with her son, romantic interest, friends, relatives, and other dog lovers. Nothing objectionable in the books, and lots of humorous observations about dog owners.

I love this series of books! I'm not a dog person at all. But these books are written in such a manner that you can not help but drawn into a world which is like no other. I wowed my friends this year when I started talking about Standard Poodles during the Westminster.