Swamp Monster: A Dog Park Mystery

by C A Newsome

Overview

Old bones land Detective Peter Dourson up a creek without a paddle.

Human remains surface on the banks of Cincinnati's Mill Creek, sparking a media circus. It's a case Detective Peter Dourson shouldn't have, with attention he doesn't want-even before his former fiancée arrives to fan the flames.

It's the Dog Park Gang's fault it landed in his lap.

Starving artist Lia Anderson has her own problems. Her new puppy is on a mission to destroy everything she owns, and a ditsy new client is driving her crazy. Worse, Peter's ex wants to rekindle their relationship.

When the bones are tied to dark rumors from 1940, past becomes present. It will take Lia and the Dog Park Gang to prevent history from repeating itself.

(95,000 words)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947085053
Publisher:	Two Pup Press
Publication date:	01/10/2021
Series:	Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries , #7
Pages:	460
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.02(d)

About the Author

Carol Ann "C. A." Newsome is an author and painter living in Cincinnati with her faithful companion, a zombie swamp monster named Gypsy Foo La Beenz. She and Gypsy spend most mornings at the Mount Airy Dog Park, digging up their next mystery.

Editorial Reviews

2021-03-24
In this seventh installment of a mystery series, Cincinnati’s favorite dog-loving sleuth confronts a cold case with a deep history.

A body has been discovered following the flooding of Mill Creek—an old one. A skeleton, in fact, dressed like Elvis Presley. Police detective Peter Dourson is dispatched to the scene, and he brings along his girlfriend, painter and occasional crime-solver Lia Anderson. Lia has just lost a beloved dog and acquired a mischievous puppy that is chewing up all of her furniture. The puppy isn’t the only new addition to her life: Peter’s chaotic ex-fiancee, Susan Sweeney, has appeared out of the blue in an attempt to win him back. Peter doesn’t have much hope of cracking the cold case—crimes like this one rarely get solved—but when a story about the Presley skeleton shows up in the National Enquirer, the police are pressured to come up with some real answers. What Lia and Peter don’t realize is that their John Doe is connected to a series of events stretching all the way back to the 1930s. With the aid of the not-always-helpful dog-park gang, can Lia solve a decades-old murder while making sure Susan doesn’t sabotage all that she has built with Peter? The novel takes place not only in the present, but also in flashbacks to the ’30s and ’40s, when the roots of skeleton Presley’s fate are planted. Newsome’s prose is urgent and textured in both sections, as here where she describes a stage magician in 1938: “Mal stood on the Trianon stage, smoking a cigarette while he polished the swords he used with his trick cabinet. It was a subtle thing to sell the act. The brilliant reflection of spotlights on the blades sent a message of deadly danger as he inserted them into the cabinet, drawing involuntary gasps from the audience.” The tale takes its time getting started, but it never bores thanks to the author’s ability to craft intriguing and endearing characters. The book is unexpectedly ambitious in its scope, expanding beyond the series’ usual canine-positive whodunits and into more literary terrain. The result is a story that should appeal to mystery fans and general fiction readers alike.

A layered, engaging murder tale that surprises on several levels.

Kirkus Reviews