The Bark Before Christmas (A Melanie Travis Mystery, #18)

by Laurien Berenson

Melanie Travis has her hands full with her two young sons, a part-time job, and a half dozen Poodles to her name. But even with the busy holiday season approaching, she still has time to sniff out a Christmastime killer...There's nothing lovelier than Christmas in Connecticut, but Melanie can scarcely find a moment to enjoy the festivities. With her youngest son approaching toddlerhood, she's decided to return to her old job at Howard Academy, a posh private school attended by the children of Greenwich's well-heeled gentry. Balancing work, motherhood, and the hectic dog show circuit takes some fancy footwork, especially when the headmaster taps her to be the chairman of the school's Christmas Bazaar. The Christmas Bazaar is Howard Academy's biggest and most important fundraiser, so Melanie feels the pressure to make it a huge success. She even enlists her longsuffering sister-in-law Bertie to help with the Santa Claus and Pets Photo Booth. But everything goes awry when a prize show dog goes missing and Santa turns up dead. The dog's owner is one of the school's most perfectly pedigreed alums, and she enlists Melanie to help find the purloined pooch. But just as Melanie starts pawing at the truth, she digs up a sleighful of sinister secrets that leaves everyone feeling less than merry.

• ISBN10: 0758284608
• ISBN13: 9780758284600
• Publish Date: 29 September 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Kensington Publishing Corporation
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

[Mystereity Reviews]

The Bark Before Christmas

The Bark Before Christmas Although I've certainly heard of this series, I've never actually read it. I enjoyed the information about how dog shows work, as I went to a dog show a few months ago and didn't understand the process. The plot was solid, but unfortunately get bogged down and as it went on, I found myself flipping through pages.  If you edited out all the bits about the MC's 2 year old, Aunt Peg, and everyone blaming the MC for the dog going missing and demanding that she find the dog, the book would only be about 80 pages long. So, just an okay book but didn't float my boat.