About the Book

Book: Mabel Goes to the Dogs

Author: Susan Kimmel Wright

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Release date: June 5, 2022

When Mabel finds herself sharing a thicket with a dead body while volunteering with canine search-and-rescue, her life has clearly once again gone to the dogs!

After losing her job at age forty-nine, Mabel thought she’d turned things around. Now, she’s doing good by volunteering and, surely, she’ll soon be a successful author, writing about her experiences. After solving two notorious, decades-old cold cases while serving as a historical society volunteer, she’s already getting invitations to appear on TV.

Her new assignment couldn’t be simpler. All she has to do is hide in the woods and let Millie the search dog practice finding her. But to her horror, Millie finds more than Mabel–there’s a dead body hiding in the same patch of brush. To make matters worse, Mabel’s maybe-boyfriend, suspended PI John Bigelow, has a dark history with the victim.

While struggling with maid-of-honor duties for best friend Lisa, a string of disasters created by handyman Acey, and a disagreeable new neighbor, can Mabel solve another murder in time to save John’s detective license–if not his neck?

My Review:

If you love fun and clean cozy mysteries, you will enjoy reading this one. Mabel is not your typical heroine. She lost her job at age 49; considers herself overweight, and now, thanks to receiving an inheritance, has decided that she will consider volunteerism as her life’s work. The problem is that whenever Mabel volunteers, trouble usually follows. The pace of this storyline keeps Mabel almost constantly on the move, and there’s plenty of twists and turns to make the reader second-guess who the killer might be. There’s even a touch of romance as Mabel’s relationship with John Bigelow seems to be moving in that direction. There’s some secondary characters in this story that add interest and a little bit of comedy.

Although it’s mentioned a couple of times about Mabel attending church, I wouldn’t consider this book in the Christian fiction category, as faith isn’t discussed. I’d put this book more in the sweet and clean general fiction category. It will be fun to follow more of Mabel’s adventures as this series continues.

I voluntarily received a copy of this book from Celebrate Lit. All opinions are my own.

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About the Author

Susan Kimmel Wright began her life of mystery in childhood, with reading. That led to writing kids’ mysteries and eventually to Medicine Spring with Mabel. A longtime member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, Susan’s also a prolific writer of personal experience stories, many for Chicken Soup for the Soul. She shares an 1875 farmhouse in southwestern PA with her husband, several dogs and cats, and an allegedly excessive stockpile of coffee and tea mugs.

More from Susan

I got stuck. When I was outlining my story for Mabel Goes to the Dogs, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. This isn’t unusual for me, or, I’m sure, many other authors. When it happens, I have to go search for inspiration—or at least, step away from my project for a bit and do something else till a fresh idea lands in my brain.

Luckily, I soon stumbled upon the Empty Frames podcast, which explored what was, at that time at least, the single largest property theft in the world—the 1990 art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Thieves impersonating police subdued the guards and over the course of the next eighty-one minutes methodically removed thirteen pieces of art then estimated at $200 million. That dollar valuation quickly escalated to between $500-600 million. The stolen artwork including paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, and Manet, was never recovered and remains the highest-value museum robbery in history.

The museum has offered a $10 million reward and never stopped trying to find its missing art. Thirty-four years later, empty picture frames still occupy the walls where the irreplaceable, stolen paintings once hung.

The story was engrossing, and I soon started down a rabbit hole, learning more about art theft and art-theft detectives, such as Charley Hill, the subject of the book The Rescue Artist. Sadly, it’s been estimated that nine out of ten stolen artworks will never be recovered. But Hill defied the odds in managing to retrieve Edvard Munch’s famous work, The Scream, brazenly stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway on the eve of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. The Rescue Artist tells the story of the theft, as well as Hill’s wild quest to locate and retrieve The Scream.

After I resurfaced from my own odyssey through Empty Frames and The Rescue Artist, I felt re-energized and ready to write again. Every time I write a book, I learn new things, which I like to share with my readers. I always hope they’ll find them as fascinating as I do!