One Bear's Opinion -- Book Review

Roll: none
Monopoly Property: none
Book: The Scottie Barked at Midnight
Author: Kaitlyn Dunnett

I had finished my previous book not long before I had to leave for dinner and while I rolled for my next Monopoly property, I didn’t have time to research and find a book that fit the task requirements, so I just grabbed this book off the shelf to have a book to take with us to dinner, so it's not part of my Monopoly Reading Challenge.

The Scottie Barked at Midnight is the ninth book in the Liss MacCrimmon Scottish mystery series. It was a fun book, though most of that was due to Dandy and Dondi, the Scottish terriers central to the plot and the title. If you were to take out the terriers, the mystery might not have been as good. I enjoyed the interaction with the dogs, but the rest of the plot was a bit thin, and it was easy to pick out the murderer and even the reason.

In many ways, I think small town mysteries are harder to write, if only because there are a limited number of characters in the main character’s circle and either new ones are brought in to be the victim or perpetrator, or a fan favorite has to be. It’s easy to pick the victim and killer in the story because they are the new to town characters. The formula is the same in any small town mystery. So the mystery is not the reason to read these series.

But in this instance, the characters are not the reason either. The interplay between the familiar characters was not there in this episode. Without the dogs and the murder, there was nothing left to keep my interest. Though the theories presented about reality competition shows are interesting and more than likely at least partially true, there still was not enough to make this episode a “must read” one of the series. If you are planning to skip one in the series, this is a perfect one to choose. And if you are just beginning the series, I suggest you try and find some of the earlier books; this is not the best of the bunch.

One Bear’s Opinion: Three cups of tea and a packet of granola bars, for energy

Happy Reading Everyone,
Oliver