In Conant’s entertaining 18th Dog Lover’s mystery (after 2006’s Gaits of Heaven
), Holly Winter, Massachusetts malamute trainer and dog columnist, goes searching for a missing dog, a Siberian husky named Strike, and instead finds a woman’s corpse. In the victim’s possession are personal papers belonging to Holly and another Cambridge-area Holly Winter, suggesting the woman may have been indulging in a little identity theft. Even stranger, when Holly finally finds Strike, she turns out to be a rare blue Alaskan malamute with Holly’s name and phone number on her tag. The two living Holly Winters must deal with their mutual dislike as they hurl into a hair-raising conflict connected to a crooked former dog breeder who’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants. Conant includes a lot of insider doggy details and lovingly depicts Holly’s interactions with her malamutes, Kimi, Rowdy and young pup Sammy. Sammy and Rowdy’s courageous defense of Holly when the killer catches up to her will have dog lovers cheering. (Nov.)
