Review: Brute Strength by Susan Conant

[miko]

Brute Strength is the 19th (!) book in the Holly Winter's series, aka, the dog mysteries with the malamutes. I suspect I haven't read every book, but I must have read a lot of them. I think we slowed down on them because the reintroduction of the characters became too repetitive, but having been away from the series a while now, I didn't feel that way about this book.

Interestingly, if you didn't know this was a mystery series, you could read about halfway through this book before it ever became clear to you - up to then it's just a book about some dogs and their people. The main character, as usual, talks and thinks about dogs a lot, and I bemusedly related to the tendency to greet the dog before the owner. If you know it's a mystery series, you can guess a lot more, but I didn't find it too distracting. M may have thought I was a bit odd as I predicted the plot of the book at him, though.

The mystery and wrap up was a little abrupt and far fetched, as you might expect for this sort of cozy. I didn't mind - it was good fun and a pleasant break from the other novel I've been reading and putting down constantly.