Ten Little Bloodhounds - Hardcover

Lanier, Virginia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060175486 ISBN 13: 9780060175481

Publisher: Harper, 1999

Synopsis

Ten little bloodhounds are just the tip of the trouble in this fifth outing in Virginia Lanier's award-winning mystery series featuring Jo Beth Sidden and the smartest, sweetest team of search-and-rescue dogs in the South.

Jo Beth runs her own business training and selling bloodhounds. With her best dogs she also braves the dangers in and around the Okefenokee Swamp to find lost children, escaped convicts, and illegal stashes. On occasion, she's been known to investigate a crime or two.

In her latest case, Jo Beth is hired by a reclusive, wealthy island matriarch to find her lost cat. Shortly thereafter, her client is murdered, and the lawyers hire Jo Beth to find the culprit. There is a slew of suspects, all potential heirs to the matriarch's fortune. Only one is a killer.

Meanwhile, a full litter of ten baby hounds is expected back at the kennel. This rare, difficult birth isn't just a matter close to Jo Beth's heart. It will also be a much-needed boon for her business.

The quicker Jo Beth can solve this case, the sooner she can get home to her dogs and get her life in order. But she's in for a surprise, and a fight she'll never forget.

Ten Little Bloodhounds is a beat-the-clock mystery with a masterful mix of deception, danger, and down-home sleuthing.

About this title

About the Author

Virginia Lanier lives on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp in Echols County, Georgia.

Reviews

Bloodhound trainer Jo Beth Sidden is feisty, driven and relentlessly independent. Her fifth, spirited outing (after Blind Bloodhound Justice), set in southeast Georgia, shows that though these characteristics may cost Jo Beth some friends, they do solve mysteries. This time Jo Beth sets off at a dizzying pace to clear up the murder of a domineering billionaire, Alyce Cancannon, who once called Jo Beth in to locate her beloved cat. Suspects include 10 relatives and the family pilot. Jo Beth is aided by a pricey D.C. detective agency hired by the Cancannon lawyers, but before she can delve into the case she must, with the aid of her irrepressible, personable bloodhounds, find a missing plane, identify a stalker and search for drugs. She must also oversee her domain of 57 dogs, 17 puppies and a catAall the while keeping an eye out for her ex-spouse, who has vowed to beat her to death. The deus-ex-machina finale is a disappointment, yet the novel is witty and brisk and so lovingly detailed with the fine qualities of bloodhounds that even the most avid dog-hater will be brought to heel. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ten Little Bloodhounds ($24.00; Jun.; 288 pp.; 0-06-017548-6): If a bloodhound trainer as expert as Jo Beth Sidden could find wealthy eccentric Alyce Cancannon's missing cat Amelia in record time, doesn't it make sense to hire her to investigate Miz Alyce's murder? The Cancannon lawyers think so, and fans of the sour Georgia peach's four previous cases (Blind Bloodhound Justice, 1998, etc.) will be happy that, like Jo Beth, they didn't proceed along normal channels. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jo Beth Sidden, a Georgia bloodhound trainer and tracker, is asked by an eccentric billionaire to find a lost cat. Jo Beth finds the cat and then a murder, a missing air force fighter, and a male stalker. In this fifth Bloodhound mystery, Lanier offers sympathetic characters and vivid southern settings, particularly the Okefenokee Swamp and the coastal islands of Georgia. Lanier skillfully juggles multiple mysteries, and her bloodhounds are always endearing. Despite the rushed ending, which feels thrown together, this is a strong book that should appeal to mystery readers who like independent women sleuths with complicated social and romantic lives. John Rowen

In Laniers fifth Jo Beth Siddens novel, the rural Georgia bloodhound breeder and sometime tracker juggles the demands of a new ten-puppy litter with searches for a kidnapped cat, a missing U.S. fighter plane that crashed in the Okefenokee Swamp, and a stalker. Nearly put out of commission by the swipe of an alligators tail in the swamp, Jo Beth nevertheless becomes enmeshed in finding the cat owners killer and winds up facing her own worst enemyskinhead ex-husband Bubba, whos out to kill her. Jo Beths pigheadedness and feminist propensity to take offense at nearly everything are beginning to wear thin, and the ending is just too improbable. But getting to that end is downright pleasurable. Lanier combines fascinating bloodhound lore and detection with dead-on perceptions of her Georgia friends and neighbors. In that regard, she just keeps getting better and better.Francine Fialkoff, Library Journal
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060175486
• ISBN 13: 9780060175481
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288