by Margaret Mizushima
Fairly good wrap-up to the "family mystery" that has cycled through the last couple of books. Maybe she should quit the series now....
Just kidding. I like her writing and I like her characters. I especially loved the veterinarian cases--diagnoses, treatments, followups. She might do very well writing a straight-up veterinarian mystery series or even just a fiction series, and leave out the police work and murder mystery altogether. Not that it wasn't good, but it wasn't what "made" the story for me.
I was mildly irritated that once again, she fell back on the "what the dog knows" plot device. That's a thing I've made up--what it means to me is, the dog handler misses a clue (an interest, a signal, even an alert) that his dog provides, and that ends up being the key to the identity of the killer. Or in this case, one of the gang. The frequency of this plot device has gotten so bad that every single time a handler's dog does something slightly out of the usual, I know--and suddenly, I know more than the detective does. And I have to play the waiting game...okay, how many more clues is it going to take? (And in this case, until the big "reveal" at the end.)
Okay, I'm exaggerating a little to make a point. So forget my irritation, and just plan to enjoy a good and gruesome story.
No comments:
Post a Comment