LAYING DOWN THE PAW – Dianne Kelly
A Paw Enforcement Novel , Book 3
St. Martin's Paperbacks
ISBN: 978-0-250-04836-3
August 2015
Cozy Mystery

Fort Worth, Texas – the Present

Officer Megan Luz longs to be a detective, but she first must put in time as a beat cop, cruising the streets of her district with her partner, Brigit, who, as a sergeant, actually out ranks her. Never mind that her partner is a 100 pound German shepherd mix. Megan begins to look for a new, nicer and roomier place to live, and one that gives Brigit a yard to enjoy. (To Brigit, that would be a place to dig holes and chase squirrels and any other wildlife.)

The two females have male friends in Seth Rutledge, a Fort Worth Fire Department bomb squad expert and his bomb-sniffing Labrador, Blast. They enjoy the dog park together.

Megan answers a call to investigate a body in a city park---a first dead body for her. And worse, it's a bloody one that causes her to lose her last meal—in front of an officer she dislikes, Derek Mackey, AKA “Big Dick.”

Meanwhile, a young man of fifteen, known to most as Dub, is settled into a caring foster home at last. Trent and Wesley, the couple who foster him, are good and kind. He's happily set for the first time in his life. Unfortunately, something from his past appearsin this good life and disrupts it completely.

Then a tornado beats a path through a section of Fort Worth and starts a chain of circumstances that brings Dub into Megan and Brigit's orbit.

Most of the narrative in LAYING DOWN THE PAW is in Megan's first person voice. Those chapters are followed by brief peeks into the mind of Brigit, and then third person accounts of the turmoil that is Dub's life.

Ms. Kelly has a light touch that often leavens the action and suspense. But make no mistake, you will become emotionally involved in the tale, both in the blossoming romance between Megan and Seth, and in hoping with all your heart that, with all the strikes against him, Dub can be happy again.

Let's hope for more in this highly enjoyable Paw Enforcement series.

Jane Bowers