Very weird ( )

I think I'm giving this 4 stars because I'm just so happy for the return of Corinna and her crew of interesting and lovable characters from cats to witches to humans. ( )

I adore Corinna Chapman. I want to luxuriate in her world of cats and baking and oddball neighbours always.

It always worries me a bit when series go on, because more often than not they run out of steam. The characters lose their charm, plots become ridiculous, changes happen for change's sake. I'm so pleased, then, that nothing really has changed at Insula. Guests arrive, a few new faces appear and the mysteries arise. Perfect.

I'd give this five stars except the war and religion sides of the story felt a bit like a fact dump, and the pointed dig at armed cops was an unwelcome reminder of the real world. (I'm totally fine with gang wars apparently.)

That aside, it was immensely good to be back in Corinna's Melbourne. More, more, more! ( )

What a wonderful way to spend the stay-at-home Memorial Day weekend than reading mysteries. My first novel, The Spotted Dog, by Kerry Greenwood jumps into various topics: religion, espionage, morals, war, animals, and relationships. Corinna Chapman and her cat Horatio live in a unique building named Insula in Melbourne, Australia, where Corinna owns and operates Earthly Delights, a bakery. Corinna’s lover/boyfriend, Daniel, an ex-Israeli soldier, leaps back and forth in the story. The dog, Geordie, an Afghanistan trained sniffer, has been kidnapped from his handler, Alasdair. The story skips to too many diversions and characters with an over abundance of religion and religious wars. The language and description excelled, but too many details bogged the story. ( )

The Spotted Dog is the seventh in Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman mystery series. I love her Phryne Fisher series and was so excited to discover a new series to read. This series features a baker, a woman who owns the Earthly Delights and lives in a co-op apartment building with enchanting and interesting residents. Everyone is extraordinary whether their talents are baking, magic, cooking, or the general art of living.

Corinna and her neighbors also have a large collection of animals who are fully anthropomorphized as Corinna imagines them sharing their opinions quite liberally. There is a mystery, or more accurately there are several mysteries. There are three burglaries, a dognapping, cyber ransomware, and even murder, though we learn of it quite late in the story. How much are they tied together or ar those ties red herrings? Are those red herrings anthropomorphized? (Kidding!) There certainly are questions that need answering which drives the reader to keep reading.

I am so sad. I did not love The Spotted Dog. This is where personal taste is such a big thing in reading. I like cozy mysteries and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple is the most well-known exemplar of that genre. The Phryne Fisher stories are cozy mysteries. But there is a certain class of modern cozy that drives me round the bend and The Spotted Dog falls into it. I am talking about the cozies feature lots of animals, friendly neighbors with special gifts, and that are altogether twee. I will tolerate just about any kind of mystery except one that are cute. Cute and myself do not belong together, so I am not reading the Cat Who Fwowed Up or he various witchy detectives, or even the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker.

If you like sweet and lovey mysteries, you will probably enjoy this one. It is simply not up my alley. That she creates engaging characters and a complex plot is immaterial when there is no real sense of jeopardy, but many people like exactly that kind of mystery and they will enjoy this as, perhaps, a slightly better than average example of a genre I dislike.

The Spotted Dog will be released on September 10th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

The Spotted Dog at Poisoned Pen Press
Kerry Greenwood author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/9781464211195/ ( )