Gaits of Heaven: A Dog Lover's Mystery (Hardcover)

by Susan Conant (Author)
Key Phrases: ring nerves, training club, Ted Green, Vee Foote, Kevin Dennehy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Not just dog lovers should enjoy Conant's carefully crafted 17th mystery to feature the Cambridge, Mass., dog trainer and amateur sleuth, Holly Winter (after 2004's Bride and Groom). Soon after Holly agrees to housebreak Dolfo, a golden Aussie huskapoo, for Ted and Eumie Green, quirky therapists as much in need of therapy as their patients, Holly finds Eumie dead of a drug overdose on one of her visits to their home. While the death appears to be an accident, Eumie's daughter from her first marriage, a reclusive, overweight Harvard coed, suspects murder. Ted's moody teenage son from his earlier marriage cares little that his stepmother has died. Plenty of interesting facts about Holly's favorite breed, the Alaskan malamute, coupled with the humorous portrait of the Boston-area therapeutic community, help make this a particularly delightful cozy. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Dog-trainer Holly Winter, now married to veterinarian Steve Delaney, donated dog- training classes to a fund-raising auction for a Cambridge, Massachusetts, private school. The winning bidders, psychotherapists Ted and Eumie Green, have a 60-pound Aussie huskapoo in dire need of training. Once involved, Holly learns that the dog's lack of obedience skills is only the tip of the iceberg. The Green family is totally dysfunctional. When Eumie dies of a drug overdose, her daughter, Caprice, is sure that it was murder. Unhappy and obese, Caprice knows all the family secrets. The ensuing investigation exposes the quirky community of therapists in Cambridge as well as a complicated web of interpersonal relationships. Dog-loving cozy readers may find the canines far more appealing than the humans, but Conant tells her story with good humor. Her fans will enjoy Holly's latest case. Barbara Bibel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Hardcover (November 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425211878
• ISBN-13: 978-0425211878
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #688,369 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 17 in The Dog Lover's Mystery Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not her best..., November 9, 2006

By	Jean Leinhauser "Rapid Reader" (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have read and enjoyed all of the previous books in this series, so much so that I pre-ordered this one and eagerly awaited it. But I found it not up to the previous standards. For me there was too much ado about
dysfunctional, doped up psychotherapists and their distinctly un-charming disfunctional children, and not nearly enough about Holly and Steve and their relationship, and not enough about the delightful Malamutes Rowdy and Kimi.

Often in books and on TV, when a romantically charged relationship results finally in marriage things become
less interesting, and that has happened here. I missed Holly's hilarilously awful father, and his amusing
second wife. My favorite characters got short shrift in favor of a not very appealing cast of misfits.

The brightest spot for me was Dolfo, a bizarre-looking mutt who had been passed of as a hot new dog breed, a Golden Aussie Huskapoo, to his clueless owners, who don't want to inhibit him by making him wear a collar
or leash.

In an unlikely ending a platoon of therapists meet in a vain attempt to unite the unpleasant troubled family,
but most of them are too drugged to care.

Any good series is allowed one weak one, and for me, this was it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre, until it gets offensive., October 9, 2008

By	Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Susan Conant, Gaits of Heaven (Berkley, 2006)

I was prepared to give this a mediocre review and pass it off as a relatively unmemorable mystery until Conant started talking about how awful it is to be overweight. From there, the longer the book went on, the more offensive it got. And it's not a case of Conant making fun of fat people. It's worse than that-- it's pity. Cloying, stinking pity that glops all over everything else in the book. It's at that point that the book goes from being mediocre to being terrible. I'd planned to give this my usual review, with a paragraph of plot summary and then a breakdown of the book's good and bad points, but I find that I can no longer remember any good points. Aside from the obvious (pointed out above), the pacing is godawful, the mystery setup is handled clumsily, and the resolution, as it does with so many bad mysteries, involves getting everyone into a room and having the solution to the mystery spoon-fed to them. (And us, of course, for the few who didn't see it coming a mile off.) I read a book or two as bad as this in the last month, but I didn't read any that were worse. *

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars So negative, January 29, 2007

By	pjf "pjf" (MD USA) - See all my reviews

I really wanted to like this book.

I know that Holly as a character is written to be rather superficial. She's dazzled by big names and celebrity, whether it's Julia Child or famous dog trainers, fashionable street addresses, educational and dog institutions, brand named dog food or titled pooches. All have gotten her gushing approbation, and for the most part, her naive enthusiasm has been a fun ride.

The flip side is that she just as strongly sounds out against anything she doesn't like: cheap addresses and clothing, poor hygiene and personal habits, garish jewelry and stereotypical characterizations have all gotten a lot of page time. Most of the books in the series seem to rise or fall on a maniac/depressive line. When Holly (or Susan?) is up, she gushes about what she loves (dogs usually, or whatever) the carping asides are minimal and the books are interesting and fun.

When she's down, the characters are drawn harshly and critically, Holly dwells on unpleasant details, asides and negative or even prejudiced descriptions and the book is not fun.

This book is not a happy one. Holly starts off the book being critical of her mother, surprisingly since formerly she always spoke of her in glowing terms. But now she blames Marissa for posthumously causing her ring nerves, and for being a "hypercompetent martinet". I admit I got tired of Holly complaining in past books about her father, who seemed generally good hearted, and whose pull with the AKC she never hesitated to draw on when needed, but was so embarrasing to her in other ways that she tried to avoid him the rest of the time. I was hoping after her marriage to Steve she'd reconcile more with Buck, grow up a little. Instead it seems she's now started after Marissa. Not that we couldn't read through the lines about that relationship in previous books, but at least Holly always spoke well of her. So that started off the book with a disappointing jolt.

Virtually every newly introduced character after that unauspicious start is dysfunctional as well, even the featured dog. And while praise of her own dogs usually adds amusement and uplift, there's very little of them in this book. Instead Holly spends a lot of her time at "home" when she used to obsess over her dogs (or her email), instead obsessing over one of her many other pet peeves, weight, in the person of an overweight houseguest, describing how she throws out much of her own food, cooks green beens, and counts every bite the character eats. She actually uses the word "disfigured" to describe her. Her own dogs come into it when one gorges on the guest's secret foodstash. The other new characters are given the same unloving detail, with something dysfunctional brought up with all of them. Without spoiling the plots to describe this, when *every* new character is introduced in a negative way, there's something wrong.

I'd hoped that Holly's obsession into negativity in the latter part of the series was due to her disappointment over Steve's marriage to another, or her previous head injury, or something related to a series plot that now that she was married to Steve or recovered from her concussion, the character's former likability would return. I.e., a plot point. It would be hard to keep reading her otherwise. But instead of marriage soothing Holly's lapse into crabbiness, and swinging her mood up, the author seems now to be using Steve for more of the same critical asides. Steve delivers a long lecture to the houseguest that sounds more like Holly "channeled" instead of his formerly mild mannered self.

People read series cozy mysteries for entertainment, and often for character development. Holly's character started out a bit strange, but often fun, and usually likeable. Even the murderers at times had a redeeming quality or two. But now Holly just isn't likeable, and even the non murderers are drawn harshly. She seems to see characters now always negatively, often stereotypically and sometimes in a downright prejudiced light that seems out of base with supposedly liberal Cambridge. She has everything she could want, (except perhaps a bigger yard) but she continually finds faults to dwell on, to obsess over. If she's angry at her mother for being a "hypercritical martinet" she needs to stop channeling that critical nature in her own fictional life. Or the author should stop channeling it in her books.

Carping isn't a very admirable quality in any character, much less being entertaining. A whole book of it without relief is not a pleasant or fun read. I know this author has written good books, and I hope she gets over her funk and writes them again. This series deserves better, as do the readers. But this book was not one of them.