bookheaven | The Tail of the Tip-Off (Mrs. Murphy, #11)

The Tail of the Tip-Off by Rita Mae Brown

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

You know I remember loving the earlier books in the 90s but I'm not the same person I was then and I am very tired of talking animals for one. Especially since it added so very little to this because we have animal meanders that trail into Islamaphobia (No Muslims could possibly live in Crozet VA, keeping in mind this was written a year after the attack on the Twin Towers) Between that, the cringey way the two side characters of color were written, the abelism and listening to the heroine, Harry, laughing and wishing the cheating husband was having a gay affair because that would be more interesting I about DNFed this 30 pages in.

It didn't really get much better. It went on nearly 400 pages of Harry thinking she's smarter than everyone, being rude to everyone as she investigates, ignoring the sheriff telling her to butt out and doing stupid crap that should have gotten her killed.

HH a local architect has been cheating on his wife and drops dead at the women's basketball game in front of Harry and her friends so naturally she has to solve the case. The most likely candidate is Fred, the county employee who has to make sure everything is up to code but his behavior is so dreadful, he could probably have been fired for it even back in 2003. The ending felt tacked on and unearned and at least the cats solved it before anyone else. She even had some of the details of poisons wrong. Sigh. If I have any more of these in my boxes of older books, they're going to the little free libraries unread.

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