Guest Sleuth Spotlight: B. J. Cade
Series: A Willa Honeycutt Cozy Mystery — the latest in the series
The Book: Willa Honeycutt came to Harmony Hollow's very first Pup Parade for the wagging tails and the free biscuits, and expected the day's biggest drama to be a costume malfunction. Then celebrity rescue influencer Janice Young is found dead in the grooming tent, bludgeoned with Mayor Bell's own participation trophy—and the wagging tails become the least interesting thing in town.
Janice, it turns out, hadn't come to the Hollow for the photo ops. She'd been quietly pulling on threads that nobody wanted pulled: missing dog files, secret placements, shelter records that didn't square with the feel-good adoption stories everyone loved to share. Sheriff Jack Gilmore orders Willa to stay out of it, which she manages for about seven minutes before she and her sharp-nosed German Shepherd, Sadie, are following the evidence anyway—with an eccentric great-aunt and two equally meddlesome friends close behind.
Everyone in the Hollow has something to protect: a shelter director missing an audit file, a breeder Janice had taken money from, a brother demanding her phone before the body's even cold, and a terrified volunteer who knows more than she'll say. The trail runs through switched collars, renamed dogs, and a rescue operation with more secrets than Aunt Sylvia's taxidermy collection—until it leads to an abandoned stock barn, a dog that was never meant to be found, and the ugly realization that Janice wasn't exposing the town's secrets. She was selling them. And now the killer has one last secret left to bury.
“What sells me on this one is the turn underneath the wagging tails: a rescue operation with secrets, and a victim who wasn’t the hero of her own story. If you like your cozies warm on top and genuinely twisty underneath, with a German Shepherd who earns her keep, this may be your next favorite read.”
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