Everybody who loves dachshunds knows about their adventurous streak. So when Mame, the elderly dachshund in Dixie Hemingway's care, gets away from her to investigate a mound of mulch, Dixie isn't surprised. What the dachshund digs up, however, is not only a surprise but a trigger for a whole new pile of jolting events that puts Dixie at the center of a hunt for a psychopathic killer--someone who fears Dixie saw him leaving the scene of a brutal murder. In the lovely seaside community of Sarasota, Florida, another desperate chase to collar a criminal is about to begin…
Description:
Everybody who loves dachshunds knows about their adventurous streak. So when Mame, the elderly dachshund in Dixie Hemingway's care, gets away from her to investigate a mound of mulch, Dixie isn't surprised. What the dachshund digs up, however, is not only a surprise but a trigger for a whole new pile of jolting events that puts Dixie at the center of a hunt for a psychopathic killer--someone who fears Dixie saw him leaving the scene of a brutal murder. In the lovely seaside community of Sarasota, Florida, another desperate chase to collar a criminal is about to begin…
From Publishers Weekly
A former sheriff's deputy in Sarasota, Fla., Dixie Hemingway now earns a living as a pet sitter, a career that once again turns perilous when her charge, a dachshund, digs up a dead body at the start of Clement's fast-paced sophomore effort (after 2005's Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter). Dixie identifies the victim as Conrad Ferrelli, whose Doberman pinscher she once walked. A wealthy, eccentric son of a famous Ringling Brothers clown, Conrad and his wife, Stevie, were funding the creation of a retirement home for circus performers. But his brother, Denton, a vicious creep with mob connections, possesses no such charitable impulse. Clement builds suspense and delivers startling revelations as both Stevie and Dixie find themselves targets of Denton's resentment.
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From Booklist
Dixie Hemmingway (Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter 2005), Sarasota deputy sheriff turned pet sitter, is back with a new case. As she walks an elderly dachshund named Mame, she sees a car speed past; after Mame breaks away and finds a dead body, Dixie realizes that the killer had been driving the speeding car. Dixie joins Lieutenant Guidry in the investigation and learns that the victim was from an old circus family. Clement uses the circus lore--and the animals in Dixie's care--to enrich her plot, creating in the process an entertaining cozy, one of the few set in South Florida, land of noir. Barbara Bibel
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