Susan Conant Mystery Novels

Susan Conant Books

A Bite of Death by Susan Conant

Evil Breeding : A Dog Lover's Mystery by Susan Conant

Dog's Life columnist Holly Winter has just landed a plum contract to write a book on Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge's legendary pre-World War II dog shows. Holly arranges to interview one of the last living participants in those fabulously opulent and exclusive shows: canine fancier B. Robert Motherway.
But there's something decidedly unsettling about the gracious old gent's imposing home with its acres of kennels. His dying wife wails piteously in an upstairs room, his servants are his sullen son and his downtrodden daughter-in-law, and his favorite German shepherd dog has an ill-bred snarl. Meanwhile, Holly's mail is laced with anonymous packages-old photographs, letters in German, and a brochure on pills for listless pooches.
Nothing makes sense until a garroted body is found in a nearby cemetery. Suddenly Holly and her Alaskan malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi, are on a seventy-year-old trail of deception, decadence, and death. And either they unearth the skeletons or join them.

Creature Discomforts : A Dog Lover's Mystery by Susan Conant

When Dog's Life columnist Holly Winter regains consciousness atop a cliff in Acadia National Park, she has no idea who she is. Not even the arrival of two beautiful and oddly friendly dogs, who happen to be her own Alaskan malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi, is enough to jar her memory. Instinct tells her that her fall was no accident and she'd best keep her amnesia a secret. Yet when she follows the clues back to the guest house of Gabrielle Beamon, a charming woman surrounded by an eccentric band of preservationists, all she finds is more questions. What was a dead man, who reportedly hated exercise and the outdoors, doing hiking in the first place? Why did Holly have a file filled with information on arsenic? And why does the charismatic founder of the Pine tree Foundation seem so hauntingly familiar? As Holly gets closer to the truth, not even her faithful dogs may be able to save her from a human who is ruthless to the bone.

Paws Before Dying by Susan Conant

The Barker Street Regulars : A Dog Lover's Mystery by Susan Conant

Holly Winter and her two malamutes make friends with fascinating Althea Battlefield, a 90-year-old Sherlock Holmes fan. When one of Althea's relatives is murdered, and another is scammed by an animal psychic, Holly's canine sleuths fetch clues to both crimes.

Animal Appetite : A Dog Lover's Mystery by Susan Conant

Dog's Life columnist Holly Winter, challenged to write about human behavior, sinks her teeth--and those of her beloved Alaskan malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi--into two mysteries. Eighteen years ago publisher Jack Andrews succumbed to poison in his coffee, leaving two suicide notes--and his golden retriever chained to the desk. His backbiting family swear he was murdered--by a crazed business partner. But they're no model of sanity either: a strident widow with well-chewed nails; a bodybuilder daughter with rottweiler tattoos; and a deranged son who forages in garbage cans, ranting about rats and relatives. What can they reveal about Jack's canine-obsessed double life? What did Jack know that was dangerous enough to get him killed? And what on earth could his death have to do with the tale of Hannah Duston, who was captured by Indians in l697, escaped, and lived to tell the tale? But even more to the point, can Holly, Rowdy, and Kimi muzzle a killer before he attacks again?

Ruffly Speaking : A Dog Lover's Mystery by Susan Conant

Ruffly, a mutt who hears for the hearing-impaired, tunes into sounds no humans can hear when he and his owner move into the home of a recently deceased dog-lover--and amateur sleuth Holly Winter suspects murder.

Bloodlines by Susan Conant

When the proprietor of Puppy Luv, a pet store fronting for black market dog breeders, is murdered, Holly Winter links the killing with the disappearance of an adorable malamute pup and is soon entering the corrupt world of dog breeding.

A New Leash on Death by Susan Conant

Holly Winter's life is going to the dogs, but that's just fine with her. She's a feisty, 30-something dog-lover, and her expertise in the breeding, training, and caring for canines is just one of her inbred talents. She's also a grand champion at tracking down criminals of the two-legged kind. When a dog owner is murdered at a training session, Holly enlists the victim's big Malamute to find the killer.

Black Ribbon : A Dog Lover's Mystery by Susan Conant

Dog expert Holly Winter and her champion malamute, Rowdy, spend a week at Waggin' Tail Camp in Maine, where a dog owner turns up dead in a freak accident and Rowdy sets out to sniff out the guilty party.

Gone to the Dogs by Susan Conant

When a local vet and a pampered pet disappear, Holly Winter and her veterinarian lover Steve Delaney go to the exclusive Cambridge Dog Training Club to investigate.

Stud Rites : A Dog Lover's Mystery by Susan Conant

Set during an Alaskan Malamute National Specialty Show, Conant's latest foray into the competitive world of purebred dogs proves lethal for the judge, who is found bludgeoned to death by a blunt object as tasteless as the murder itself. And who might benefit from the judge's death? Many, as it turns out--from the woman who has inherited his job to the organizer of the show, and the handler whose dog now has a good chance of winning.
Dog's Life writer Holly Winter is on the scene with two dogs entered in the show. She know who has access to the murder weapon, but it is a former lover, now working for a firm that specializes in canine reproductive technology, who unwittingly puts her on the trail of the killer.
Summary
When dog show judge James Hunnewell is bludgeoned to death, it is clear to columnist Holly Winter that everyone had wanted to get rid of the judge, and it is up to her to find the link between Hunnewell's murder and the violent death of a woman who once owned a legendary stud dog.

Creature Discomforts : A Dog Lover's Mystery by Susan Conant

A hike in the woods has memorable consequences for dog writer Holly Winter in this latest of Susan Conant's Dog Lover's Mysteries.
When Holly Winter awakens, battered and bruised, clinging to a boulder on the side of a cliff, she doesn't even recognize her own beloved malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi, much less remember their names--or her own. She does, however, realize they're her dogs, and that she is--to put it mildly--a "dog person." And she vaguely remembers hearing a sinister voice from above.
Putting clues together, she discovers that she is in Acadia National Park, on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and that she's the guest of one Gabrielle Beamon, a most attractive and charming woman, whom Holly doesn't recognize at all. When it is discovered that there was another fall, this one fatal, at approximately the same time and close to the same place as Holly's, she begins to fear for her own safety. In fact, she has all she can do to figure out what's going on without giving away her own loss of memory.
You'll be licking your chops with glee as the dog fanciers in Conant's eclectic and eccentric group of characters once more prove themselves smarter and more resourceful in every way than their more anthropocentric counterparts.

Evil Breeding by Susan Conant

OxfordBooks.com / Oxford, MS

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