The Barker Street Regulars

Book excerpt: Susan Conant continues to surprise--this time by involving dog writer Holly Winter in a wickedly amusing tale full of dastardly deeds and delightful eccentrics. An avid devotion to the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and an equally avid devotion to dogs, combine to draw Holly Winter and her two beloved malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi, into one of Conant's most original and entertaining mysteries to date. Rowdy has finished his training as a therapy dog and now accompanies Holly on weekly visits to the Gateway Nursing Home, where they meet Althea Battlefield, still formidable at the age of ninety, and her two elderly, admiring cohorts, Hugh and Robert--all fanatic devotees of the Master (as they call Sherlock Holmes). When Althea's grandnephew is murdered at the home of her younger sister, Ceci, everyone is horrified, but it's the plight of Ceci herself--who is being victimized by an unscrupulous animal psychic--that finally unites this unlikely group in a crime-stopping spree that requires not only the finely tuned ratiocination of the Holmes admirers but the eager cooperation of an outraged Holly and the very particular talents of her willing canine accomplices. No special knowledge of the Sherlockian canon is required for the utmost enjoyment of this engaging romp, and Conant's own devoted followers will be delighted to find her dog-loving alter ego, Holly Winter, still poking fun at the world of Cambridge eccentrics and dog fancy fanatics, but also expanding her horizons into the world of literary trivia and--yes--feline rescue, however initially reluctant. From the Hardcover edition.