- Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Bantam; First THUS edition (Feb 1 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0553580523
- ISBN-13: 978-0553580525
- Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 1.4 x 17.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 113 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,184,401 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Few readers, other than Conant's most devoted fans, will yap happily at her latest Dog Lover's mystery (after The Barker Street Regulars). Canine-crusading sleuth Holly Winter has signed a contract for a book of photographs about the famous Morris and Essex Dog Shows. In researching the events, she encounters an elderly man, B. Robert Motherway, who attended the shows as a youth. Interviewing him, Holly is introduced to his disquieting household: a son and daughter-in-law who are treated like servants, an unseen and deathly ill wife and a haughty grandson. When seemingly natural death and then outright murder visit Motherway family members, Holly pokes her nose in to scent out the truth. With the help of some anonymous letters and her shrewd friend Althea, Holly pieces together the dangerous secrets behind the Motherways' facade of patrician privilege. Canine lore and Conant's proselytizing against evil dog-breeding practices tend to swamp the meager but melodramatic plot, and her villains are so hazily sketched that readers might wonder how they engender any fear. The Barker Street Regulars was a much more accomplished story than this; hopefully Conant's next will be, too. Agent, Deborah Schneider.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Holly Winter, a Boston dog trainer, writer, and sleuth, has a contract to write a book about Rockefeller heiress Geraldine R. Dodge and her pre^-World War II Morris and Essex dog shows. In researching the book, Holly is drawn into a murder, a case of domestic abuse, and evidence of a Nazi spy ring. This twelfth Holly Winter mystery is filled with facts about dog breeding as well as training how-tos. Conant continues to develop her human and canine characters and to reveal the wonderful museums, parks and cemeteries of Boston. Unfortunately, this work is not as strong as The Barker Street Irregulars ; Conant has trouble weaving together the disparate story lines. Recommend it to devoted fans of Conant and other dog mysteries, but Lanier's Ten Little Bloodhounds (see review, p.1481) is a better example of the canine crime subgenre. John Rowen
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
For Alaskan Malamute Lovers Only,
By
This review is from: Evil Breeding (Mass Market Paperback)
This is the only one of the series that I've read, and now I doubt I'll bother with the others. Conant has hung a bunch of red-herring plot twists and turns on a simplistic semi-mystery that in the end is nothing more than a guilty-family-secret story. Nazis, eugenics, dog shows in the thirties, a Rockefeller heiress, the Isabelle Stewart Gardner museum -- all turn out to be irrelevant to the story line....
4.0 out of 5 stars
A dog book for non-doggy readers . . .,
By kellytwo "kellytwo" (cleveland hts, ohio) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Evil Breeding: A dog lover's mystery (Hardcover)
Sometimes, when a mystery or other novel contains an animal(s) as co-sleuth or even as companion, the author gets so carried away with how wonderful and splendid and grand the animal is, he or she tends to go overboard into the cutesy area. I admit that on occasion, I have not finished reading such books, because even though I generally do like animals, I prefer them to stay as an animal, and not assume human characteristics. Of course, should one such ever 'talk' to me (and make sense) I might change my mind.This book however, carefully walks that tight-rope and never goes too far astray from what is a really cracker-jack plot. Recent history can be as fascinating as the farther away variety, as this book readily illustrates. Eugenics, whether applied to humans or animals, can be a fascinating topic of discussion; whether it should be practiced or not is another matter entirely. Holly Winter, a writer and sometime dog-trainer, loves Alaskan Malamute Dogs. Of that there can be no question. When she lands an assignment to write the text for a photo book of a famous dog-lover, she has no idea where the tale will lead her. All the clues are nicely laid out, and the sprinkling of facts in with the fiction combine to educate as well as entertain the discerning reader. For instance, I have no idea if Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge ever really did exist, but I know that Isabella Stewart Gardner did--and left her home and immense fortune to founding the museum she named Fernway Court, and which was subsequently spectacularly robbed in 1990. If this is a new trend--combining recent history with current day people and happenings--albeit in a rather historic setting (in this case Cambridge Massachusetts) then I'm all for it. I found this to be engaging and informative novel, and recommend it to readers of mystery novels--whether animal lovers or no.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Evil Breeding,
By A Customer
This review is from: Evil Breeding: A dog lover's mystery (Hardcover)
Never have I disliked a main character as much as the woman in this book. The character was so self-centered, rude, arrogant and obsesssive about controlling her dogs that it interfered with the marginal plot.
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