I love books which feature working dogs. In fact, I am a huge fan of books which feature animals, full stop. Apart from the discovery scene, where protagonist Jazz's cadaver dog finds the body of a nun in a Catholic school, dogs feature quite little in the plot. This is a more hard-edged plot, there's little humor and more realism, but it stands on the cozy-ish end of the spectrum. The language and content are clean, there's very little cursing and no sexual content. The amateur sleuth aspect was maybe slightly over the top, she gets on with sifting evidence and investigating the murder/disappearance of victim Bernadette unhindered, and remarkably unhindered by the police.
The plot seemed to drag a bit for me. Particularly in the middle of the book, there were side threads and distractions which went on for ages. I found myself having to fight the urge to skim pages. When reading (and especially when I'm reading for review), that's something I don't do, so this read took me much longer than normal to finish. I kept putting the book down instead of skipping ahead. The dialogue and characterizations were well done and I didn't have trouble keeping the characters straight. I'm not sure how realistic the teachers' and staff reactions to the students' misbehaviors were, but it wasn't too egregious and I didn't find myself being yanked out of my suspension of disbelief often, at least.
The denouement and resolution were foreshadowed fairly heavily, but still felt cartoonish and over-the-top. This book does work well as a standalone. I don't feel the need to go back and read the first book in the series.
Three and a half stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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