Customer Reviews

Scent of Danger: A Dale Kinsall Mystery (Five Star First Edition Mystery)

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's a mystery. It's got a beagle. It's by Doranna Durgin. What more could you want?

What, you want more information? Oh, fine. Here's the thing, though. I don't normally get into a lot of the things that other reviewers do, like plot and whether the mystery is hard or easy to figure out. My reading tastes generally depend on other things. What's most important to me is whether the characters come alive, whether the writing (I mean the actual use of language to convey the story) is good, whether the pacing keeps me reading, and then, further down the list, whether I liked the plot. Generally, if I liked all the other things, I'm going to be just fine with the plot, as long as it isn't ridiculous, because it's those other things that make the plot interesting to me. (As long as there *is* a plot, I mean. I'm not a fan of pure "character study" books. Besides, Harriet already did the plot thing.)

This is why I'm a fan of Durgin's writing. Her characters and writing always sparkle, right there on the page. You could practically read the book in the dark, by the light of the sparkle. You can just see the characters doing the things they're doing, they remind you of people you know, they seem like real people. And not just the main characters... ALL the characters are tended to. They're not just cardboard cut-outs for the author to move around to get the main characters into and out of trouble. And you *care* about what they're doing, and what happens to them, which is where the whole "plot" thing comes in.

So, on the plot: I see that Dale and Sully, characters first met and loved in Five Star First Edition Mystery - Nose For Trouble really are in trouble this time, and Dale's hopefully-romantic-interest and fellow veterinarian Laura is right there with them. A reviewer said the mystery was "thin" but I didn't think so. If anything, it's more layered than the mystery in Nose for Trouble. There's more than one thing going on here, and the unraveling of the tangle by Dale (with a big assist from The Beagley One, Sully) was satisfying. The progress of the romance was... well, I'm still hoping for more! But, maybe the next book...?

Far more delightful than any cookie cutter mystery, Scent of Danger has exquisitely well drawn characters, an amazing understanding of dogs, and a hint of romance. Harassed with a barrage of threatening notes, Dale Kinsall, a veterinarian, enlists the aid of his beagle and his Dineh girlfriend to help find the source. It isn't long before Dale begins to worry that there might be a link between the notes and a frightening outbreak of the deadly hanta virus.

When Dale finds himself in a bind, Sherri, his office manager with a day-glo fashion sense, Mailman Hank and his overweight "temper with teeth" dog, and the women's kaffeeklatsch which gathers every day to get a glimpse of "Mr. Dr. Dale," are all too ready to help. Through the twists and turns of the intriguing plot, the reader discovers that this mystery is as much about how-dunit and why-dunit as whodunit. Durgin keeps you on the edge of your seat with tight plotting and a wicked sense of humor until the very last page.

I got this book for my mom. As soon as it came in the mail she read it and then shared it with me. The story is great, the little points of view from the dog added a wonderful touch. I can't wait for the next book in the series to come out.

Former Buckeye, Dr. Dale Kinsall is still adjusting to life in West Winoza, just outside of Flagstaff, Arizona. He finds his staff at the Foothills Veterinary Clinic professional but eccentrically amusing except when they wear animal scrotums as earrings; that sort of feels painful. He also is half in love with another veterinarian Laura Nakai who he hoped would join his practice, but did not.

As the clinic is being renovated and Dale semi exiled due to asthma, he begins receiving weird warning notes written in rhyme, but placed in such away that someone with full clinic access was dropping them off. Laura becomes concerned when her young second cousin becomes deathly ill from hanta fever. As the notes keep coming, Dale and his sidekick Sully the mouse eating Beagle work on the case of the notes even as he saves Laura's life when she comes down with hanta fever.

Although the mystery is thin and comes late, fans will enjoy this fun Arizona cozy due to the eccentric cast. Fans will be fascinated that Dale is in the local police dog house for solving a recent case (see NOSE FOR TROUBLE) instead of them. The support cast adds to the character driven plot as Dale with Sully follow the SCENT OF DANGER.

Harriet Klausner

Doranna Durgin writes a symphony of characters with the skill and complexity of Tchaikovsky. What a pleasure to catch up with Dale and Sully in their latest adventure. Bravo! More, please!

This is the second in the veterinarian Dale Kinsall series and after his last mystery he has moved to Arizona and is now renovating his clinic. As he does so, veterinarian Laura Nakai, who Dale is sweet on, and whom Dale wants to join his practice, tells him that her cousin Mary and Mary's son Robert are coming to stay with her because Robert has contracted the hanta virus and is going to be treated at a nearby hospital. This bothers Laura, and it is getting in the way of Dale's intentions; meanwhile, Dale is getting strange couplets from somebody. As the story meanders endlessly towards no noticeable goal Dale goes and visits Laura, finds that her air conditioner has been tampered with, that there is a mouse nest found inside it, and as Laura collapses and it is found that she has also contracted the hanta virus.

Dale begins to realize that there is something suspicious behind the doggerel that he's been receiving, the two cases of hanta virus in Laura's family, and a death in a near-by town. He brings his suspicions to the authorities but not much happens as Deputy Rena Wells who he contacts is being ostracized from the rest of the force because of her "relationship" with Dale, and because the authority's egos were bruised because of Dale's solving a headlining crime in the previous novel.

The basic problems with this novel are manifold. The first is the pacing; it is slow, damn near lapsing into a coma at times. The reader will end up going past the hundred page mark before we realize that a crime has been committed. One hundred plus pages out of a two hundred and fifty page novel is just way too long to kick start a mystery.

Another problem is the "Scent Of Danger"'s characters, they had no personality; I literally kept forgetting who was who and didn't much care. The only female that really stands out in the book is Sheri, his girl Friday. It seems that authors keep mistaking quirky with obnoxious. Sheri is one of those unquirky, but totally obnoxious characters that those uninitiated with this series will quickly pray be a murder victim and put us all out of our misery. No such luck. After every castration of a dog, she will steal the testicles and put string on them and put them, like fuzzy dice, on Dale's rear view mirror, put them on his pizza, or put them in his doughnuts.

This is funny? This is a doctor's office. Not only is this inexcusably unprofessional, and grotesque, it is horribly unsanitary as there is a contagious disease that seems to mysteriously spreading, and some "quirky" moron is pulling pranks like this? I suspect that behavior like this could in some places actually cause legal problems, and/or a suspension of somebody's license. This especially becomes unfunny when Dale almost eats one, and then feeds it to his dog. While some particularly backward people might find this behavior funny, in the real world, if she was working for me, she quickly wouldn't be working for me.

Then there is the problem of making Dale's beagle a major character. Having him interact with Dale in the way that he does is amusing at first, but his italicized sub-vocalizations soon become grindingly annoying, like having some particularly slow person constantly drool on you at random times just for effect. If this book was supposed to serve as propaganda for the beagle breed, it failed miserably.

But the most important problem "Scent Of Danger" had is that this book really does not stand alone. It acts as a true sequel. Not a chapter goes by where we are not treated to constant references to the first book in this series, yet the circumstances of the first book are never really explained. So we are constantly barraged with these almost cryptic comments and references to the circumstances that have happened in the first novel. After a while this becomes annoying, like listening to somebody randomly lapse into code for no concernable reason. To make "Scent Of Danger" seem more like a sequel to "Nose For Trouble" than a stand-alone series novel is that the ONLY reason that the crimes in "Scent Of Danger" were committed were BECAUSE of the events in "Nose For Trouble", which are never adequately explained. When you get to the ending and find out the reason for everything you just want to throw the book across the room and exclaim, "You have got to be kidding me!!!"

At a short two hundred and fifty pages this book became one of the hardest and longest slogs that I've done through a book in several years. And there is no call for it. Durgin is a good writer, her Kimmer Reed books are textbook examples of how to write a flawed, but likable and human female action characters, but "Scent Of Danger" is just a dull, innocuous five-finger exercise.

It should be noted that this book is now available as a low-cost paperback reprint from Harlequin's Worldwide imprint. There is also a native American character here (Laura), and the book's plot has a Native American slant to it, and that is the only interesting thing about this novel.