A Midwinter’s Tail

Lucky Paws Petsitting Mystery Series, Book 4

By: Bethany Blake

Narrated by: Elise Arsenault

Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

To bark or not to bark...

Professional pet sitter Daphne Templeton loves the holidays in Sylvan Creek, Pennsylvania. And nothing gets her into the spirit more than the town's annual Bark the Halls Ball. The whole community will be there to wag their tails, especially this year's special guest - Celeste "CeeCee" French, founder of a national chain of pet care franchises, who's returning home to announce plans for a bright new flagship store.

But not everyone's celebrating CeeCee's homecoming. Daphne's friend Moxie Bloom, owner of Spa and Paw, a unique salon for people and their pets, has plenty to growl about. So when CeeCee is found face down under Sylvan Creek's town Christmas tree, stabbed with a distinctive pair of professional-grade pet shears, suspicion lands squarely on Moxie. Despite Daphne's promises to Detective Jonathan Black, she quickly reprises her role as amateur sleuth. Ably assisted by her basset hound sidekick, Socrates, she must hurry to prove her friend's innocence before a killer barks again....

©2018 Beth Kaszuba (P)2019 Tantor

Fun detective series

I am enjoying the readers voice as well as the relationships between the characters. Very enjoyable read.

A great addition to the LuckyPaws series

Such a fun read! Daphne and Socrates are great company when you need to relax. Bethany Blake’s characters seem to walk off the page and sit right next to you. This holiday-themed mystery will keep you guessing, and Elise Arsenault’s narration strikes just the right energetically casual tone.

Loving warm-hearted slithering

Another murder or two, and another crime to solve. Puzzles to put together and plenty of sleuthing to be done as love old and new acquire.

Great book

Not so easy to guess the ending which is nice. Very easy to listen to.

GREAT

I was an avid reader. Great to be able to experience that love of books again.

Foolish/terrible characters

This character is the epitome of stupid. She continually makes a point to not lock her doors because “it’s not that kind of town”, even after multiple murders have taken place in this town, and after nearly being murdered several times, and after multiple people have had their homes/businesses invaded so the murderer can steal something so they can frame someone else, nope, why would she lock her doors?! But after sliding around one time in the snow she decides to get AAA, because that’s reason enough to do something smart, that will help her. So why can’t she be smart enough to do something as simple as lock her doors then?! It’s clearly not the same town anymore.

And her mother isn’t funny, or someone you just roll your eyes at, she’s a terrible human being, literally, completely selfish and not a good mother. She is constantly belittling her daughter (though now that I think about it, she has ample reason to do so). She can only think of money, and steals things from people’s homes, in the name of tidying up.

She intentionally keeps things from the detective, literally impeding an investigation, but then when Johnathon doesn’t share information he isn’t allowed to, because you know, he’s doing his actual job, she is disappointed in him, and even thinks that she can’t consider a relationship with anyone who doesn’t confide in her. Any detective worth his salt would have arrested Daphne for impeding their investigation(s); she “accidentally”, and intentionally, messes with evidence, which makes it highly likely that the murderers walk. She sneaks into homes, hotel rooms, and offices, which would be another reason for her to be arrested, so she can find evidence, which wouldn’t be admissible in court, but she thinks her juvenile investigation is so important so why follow the law, or care if the evidence can actually be used??

I haven’t finished this book yet, but she also keeps talking about the Krav Maga lesson she had, but hasn’t used it in any of the other books, not even tried to use it so far, like when one murderer was dragging her to throw her down some stairs.

Oh, and the scissors the pug brings her? Why doesn’t she tell the police to test for dog slobber, to prove she was telling the truth? And if she suspected it was the murder weapon, why not call the police??? What she did really just makes it worse for her friend.

In the book before this one she talks about the importance of hard work, when one of the characters says she was tired of struggling, but Daphne had her schooling paid for, and is living with her sister, so while she’s acting like she earned her place, this other woman has been working her way through life, and paid for her own schooling, but apparently she was wrong to want money to help herself through life. To be even more of a hypocrite, and cruel, Daphne sells the painting to start her own business, (hasn’t done anything to actually work hard to earn her way; it’s so obvious the woman who left her the painting wanted her to sell it and use the money for what she wanted to do, instead of giving it to the daughter of the painter to do what she wanted) but she does give this woman a job, that barely pays anything, then “selflessly”, gives the rest of the money to charity (but can’t even buy new tires, or fix up her van. I guess that would be greedy).

Daphne is also actually rather inconsiderate, she’s always running late to things, but doesn’t seem to care how much she inconveniences others. She promises to keep things secret, but doesn’t, though in many situations she just shouldn’t make those promises because in so doing she hides things like motive from the police. She doesn’t respect other people’s privacy. And she tends to make things about herself.

I do love the animals.