Delilah Doolittle and the Purloined Pooch

The North American continent is tilted to the southwest, so the saying goes, and everything loose rolls into Southern California. So perhaps it makes sense that this is where one would find Delilah Doolittle, an elderly British widow and ""tracer of missing pets."" Most of her time is spent driving to and from pet shelters, and her latest mission--to find a champion German shepherd--seems to promise more of the same. However, when Delilah starts finding human bodies as well, the local police begin to suspect her of foul play. This novel, marking the debut of the pet-detective series, is mildly amusing with its details of the pet world. However, Delilah's attempts to help the police in their murder investigation aren't terribly convincing and the plot itself is weak, with most readers easily guessing important facts almost from the word go. Also, Guiver falls into a pitfall common to first-person narration--forcing the main character to muse about banal facts of her life in order to fill readers in. (Oct.)