Book Review: Santa Clawed

Author: Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown
Title: Santa Clawed
Publisher: Bantam
Publish Date: Nov 24, 2009
Buy: Amazon
Book Blurb:  As Harry well knows, there’s hardly a place on earth cozier than Crozet, Virginia, at Christmastime. Snowflakes, carolers, it’s all picture-perfect until Harry and her husband, Fair, find the tree they’ve chosen grimly decorated with a corpse. The tree farm is run by the Brothers of Love, a semimonastic organization whose members live atop the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains. Now, as the season grows merrier, a murderer is growing bolder. One by one, prominent men of Crozet are being crossed off Christmas shopping lists and added to the morgue. And if Harry and her four-legged helpers aren’t very good–and very careful–this Christmas will be her last.

Review: Santa Clawed is one of the most fun cozy mysteries I've read this holiday season. Harry and her brood of helpful animal sleuths are fabulous. I love Mrs. Murphy, Pewter and Tucker.  These furrballs are some of the most well written animals in fiction.

The mystery involves the murder of two monks from the Brothers Of Love and a prominent doctor. There's a lot more to the Brothers Of Love organization than just spiritual life too, and that's what brings about many of the twists and turns in the story. Most of the monks have a criminal past or something scandalous that they are repenting for.

Harry discovers the first body in the Christmas tree she wants to buy at the lot run by the Brothers, but it isn't until much later when her animals find a large sum of money that she really gets drawn into the thick of it and lands her in the ER.

The whodunit wasn't quite what I expected but as I think about it now, it should have been a little more obvious to me, but hey, you shouldn't be able to pick out the killer easily!

This is the first book from this series that I've read, and I look forward to hunting down some of the others!

Rating: 4 flowers