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MEOW IS FOR MURDER
by Linda O. Johnston
Berkley, February 2007
272 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0425214303


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In MEOW IS FOR MURDER, the fourth of the pet-sitter mysteries, animals take a back seat to the human soap opera. Kendra Ballantyne, part-time lawyer and part-time pet-sitter, has been maneuvered into working for her boyfriend's ex-wife, who is trying to avoid a stalker. One morning the stalker threatens Kendra for helping Amanda. The next morning, Kendra finds him stabbed to death in Amanda's bedroom.

Kendra would be just as happy to let her be arrested, but Amanda makes an offer Kendra can't refuse – in return for being cleared of suspicion by any means necessary, Amanda will also clear out of Kendra's love life. But until then, Amanda is going to see as much of Jeff as possible, to make sure that Kendra never knows entirely where she stands. Adding to Kendra's romantic woes is the legal problem that she is also a suspect because she is the one who found the body and had been recently threatened.

Until now the pet-sitter mysteries have been cute, if not deep, but this particular one had a lot of flaws I couldn't overlook. Kendra's employer is impossibly supportive of what is coming across as completely random working hours, not to mention her constant problems with the law. But if he's too good to be true, Amanda is too bad to be true, a stock bitch straight out of Central Casting with no redeeming – or three-dimensional – features.

And Kendra didn't impress me much with her waffling back and forth over Jeff, whose character is reduced to a bone that two dogs are fighting over. Even Johnston doesn't seem to know what to do with Jeff, as one of Kendra's legal cases introduces her to someone who is obviously being set up as a rival, if not Jeff's successor.

Rounding out the unenthusiastic cast were the useless police. I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough that they would agree to allow Kendra's less-than-legal tactics to do their job for them, especially since she was also a suspect. But then, it is a hard case to solve because the solution is poorly foreshadowed and comes out of left field.

All in all, MEOW IS FOR MURDER is for those times when you might want a very fluffy mystery that you don't have to think about at all – because if you start thinking, it all falls apart.

Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, June 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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