Shady Hollow (A Shady Hollow Mystery)

A murder has happened in the little village of Shady Hollow, and Vera Vixen is onto the biggest story of her journalistic career. Vera puts her snout to the grindstone and does her best to sniff out suspects. There is another attempted murder, and then Vera herself comes close to being a victim of the killer. She starts to work closely with Deputy Orville, and it seems there could be more to this relationship than solving mysteries. When a second murder occurs, Vera starts taking chances to get to the bottom of things, but there is danger afoot.

Don’t judge this book by its cover. It is not a children’s book, although it might look like it. It’s a cozy mystery inexplicably set in a village of forest animals, and it is a tremendous distraction from what could be a pretty good cozy. It’s hard to focus on the mystery when the reader is trying to imagine a sheep and a beaver having an affair or a couple of squirrels carrying a beaver on a stretcher or a bear and a fox falling for each other. Ugh. If you can get past that, the writing is very nice.