"A terrific debut of a new interesting and believable cozy series"
Reviewed by Betty Cox
Posted April 11, 2011
Mystery Pet Lovers
Lauren Vancouver is the head of HotRescues a no kill animal
shelter funded generously by Dante DeFrancisco, owner of
HotPets, a chain of pet supply stores. Lauren met Dante
through her friend, Kendra Ballantyne, who is an attorney,
pet sitter, and Dante's special lady. Efram Kiley had been working at HotRescues as part of a
legal settlement. Efram's badly abused dog was re-homed by
HotRescues after the dog was completely well and the owner
could not be found. Efram sued the shelter and Dante, and
a compromise was worked out that as long as Efram worked
for Lauren and learned how to properly care for an animal,
Dante would pay him a substantial sum in installments. In
the event Efram didn't live up to his end of the agreement,
the payments would stop. When a filthy and over crowded
puppy mill is raided, Efram is caught trying to throw Beagle
puppies down a storm drain leading to the
ocean. Lauren had been called in to help where she could
with the abused and sick animals. As far as she is
concerned, Efram's despicable act negated the legal
agreement with Dante, and Lauren advises the scum ball never
to come to the shelter again. However, Efram does come back and threatens Lauren and all
of the animals at HotRescues if he does not get the money
due him. A nasty scene ensues before Efram leaves. The
next morning his body is found in the animal compound.
Since Lauren had spent the night in her office just in case
Efram did return to hurt the animals, she is the prime
suspect. She just might have an ally in Captain Matt
Kingston, head of the SmART team (Small Animal Rescue Team
of Los Angeles Animal Services). Matt's a very imposing
figure, and quite a hunk; he is also younger than Lauren,
but hey! Lauren needs all the help she can get to prove
her innocence. BEAGLEMANIA is the excellent start of a new animal series
by the wonderful Linda O. Johnston, who writes the
fantastic Pet Sitter series. This is an excellent story
about how a shelter should be run -- if it only had the
finances available to them that HotRescues does. The
supporting cast of characters is fully developed, and all
dialogue is intelligent and interesting. A story thread
about a sick woman having to give up her beloved dog
because she has no income and is looking for a cheaper
place to live is beautifully told and Lauren is able to
help with the problem. Dante and Kendra are prominently
present, which made this reviewer happy. Lauren's budding
relationship with Matt is also pleasing. Beware, Ms.
Johnston is a firm believer in surprise endings. What a terrific debut of a new interesting and believable
cozy series that portrays the good and bad treatment of
pets. Oh, by the way, the author points out that this no-
kill facility only applies to animals.
SUMMARY
Lauren Vancouver is the head of HotRescues, a no-kill
animal shelter north of Los Angeles, but it's often human
nature that puts her in the path of danger. Just like when
she helps rescue four adorable beagle puppies that were
dumped down a drainpipe at a nasty puppy mill. One of the
mill's employees has a history of dog abuse-and a bone to
pick with Lauren. And when he's found dead at HotRescues
after threatening her, Lauren will have to sniff out the
real killer to keep herself out of a cage...
ExcerptChapter 1
I am not a killer.
At least not a killer of animals. I save their lives
whenever humanly possible, especially pets. Their sole
purpose on this earth is to love and be loved, like
perpetual children.
People are something else.
Right now, I’d have gladly used my own hands—nice,
strong ones for someone in her forties, since I do a lot of
enclosure cleaning, lugging and opening of animal food
containers, and other physical labor—to strangle Efram
Kiley, the man who stood in front of me. His expression
was the picture of innocence even as he squared his thin
yet sturdy body, as if attempting to hide the filled floor-
to-ceiling cages in this torture chamber of a mega shed
from my view.
Impossible, considering how many there were.
He couldn’t hide the smell, either. It was awful. The
caged puppies and their parents obviously had no choice but
to eliminate their wastes in the same place they lived and
ate and suffered. The only surface beneath them was wire
mesh that undoubtedly hurt their feet. No comfy rugs or
mats for them.
And the sounds. Their cries. Their barks.
The outraged comments and shouts of the three Los
Angeles Animal Cruelty Task Force members who’d leaped in
like superheroes to reinforce regular animal control
officers, all intent on saving these poor creatures.
Efram must have read the fury in my expression. Or maybe
he’d learned enough about me, in the past few months, to
know what I was thinking.
He quickly turned, and before I could say anything, he’d
plucked an adorable beagle puppy from one of those
appalling crates and gently placed her into my arms.
What could I do but nestle the squirmy little body close
to my face, stench and all? "You poor little thing," I
whispered against one of her long ears as I used my free
hand to extract a small towel from the tote bag over my
shoulder and wrap her in it.
"She’ll be all right now, Lauren," Efram assured me. As
if he had anything to do with this rescue. Instead, the
opposite was true. He was a party to the horror of this
puppy mill. Even so, he said, "Isn’t this just a terrible
place?" He shook his head slowly, as if he was as upset as
I about the condition of this hell house and the innocent
beings who lived here.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Terrible. So why do you work here?"
"I don’t."
"Then are you one of the owners?" I demanded.
"You know better than that, Lauren."
What I knew was that he was involved. I didn’t need to
know exactly how, although I doubted he owned the place.
But I’d have bet he profited from it somehow.
I glared into Efram’s doleful brown eyes as I shifted
the puppy in my arms. Towel or not, that smell was getting
to me. But I wasn’t about to release her till I saw she
would be taken care of.
She was just one of dozens of puppies here that the ACTF
and animal control officers were handling with great care
and angelic concern. And I would, eventually, have to hand
her over to them.
Efram was in his twenties, with dark, messy hair that
hung over his forehead. He worked out a lot and favored T-
shirts with torn-off sleeves to show off his muscular
biceps. His jeans were worn, his sneakers new.
He did a lot of work for me at HotRescues these days—the
no-kill animal shelter I had helped to open a few years ago
and now ran.
Oh, yeah. Efram was an animal care apprentice tending to
creatures in need. He even had a choice about it: either
learn how not to abuse pets and help care for them while
they waited to be adopted, or forgo the substantial amount
of money that was part of the legal settlement we’d entered
into a while back.
Guess which he’d chosen.
Last year, Efram had threatened to sue HotRescues and me
for rehoming his dog, Killer, without attempting to find
the lost pup’s real owner. I, in turn, had been furious
about the condition of that poor dog, now called Quincy,
who had been brought to HotRescues as an apparent rescue
from a public shelter, or so I’d chosen to believe. The
settlement of our dispute had been fair. It resulted in
Efram’s being paid to learn how to really care for animals.
I’d even thought that, after all we’d taught him, he had
become genuinely contrite for having abused Quincy. He
certainly had seemed to throw himself energetically into
his quasivolunteer work with HotRescues.
I wondered now if every bit of it had been an act.
"You’re Lauren Vancouver, aren’t you?" One of the
uniformed animal control officers I’d glimpsed outside
approached me. She was tall, her ginger hair pulled starkly
back from her round face.
Efram looked relieved, as if this official, who could
arrest him, was easier to deal with than me. Maybe she was.
I expected J. Gibbons—the ID on her nametag—to demand
that I leave. Now. Civilians weren’t particularly welcome
here, in the middle of an official investigation. I knew
that.
But this wasn’t the first animal rescue that I’d crashed.
Nor would it be my last.
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