From School Library Journal
YA. The murder of a jockey at a fashionable Virginia thoroughbred horse race sets experienced animal sleuths Mrs. Murphy (a cat) and Tucker (a dog) into motion as this delightful series continues. Their owner, Harry, who is the postmistress, and the county sheriffs are also hard at work on the case, but it is this pair of detectives, assisted by their animal friends, who first learn that a disappearance years before was actually a murder. Eventually everyone sees the links and motives between the murders and the villain is apprehended. This fast moving, fun novel provides a good look at small town life?everyone knows everyone, or more correctly, thinks they know everyone. The clever writing displays the authors' keen insight into the relationships and potential dialogue between pets. A great choice for mystery lovers.?Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Brown continues her cozy mystery series (e.g., Pay Dirt, LJ 10/15/95) wherein both human and feline detectives investigate murder. Here, a jockey is done in at the Montpelier steeplechase, and the four-legged Mrs. Murphy sneaks into the stable to ferret out the truth.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Rita Mae Brown and her feline coauthor return with a fifth murder mystery featuring Crozet, Virginia, postmistress and amateur sleuth Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen, her tiger cat Mrs. Murphy, and corgi Tee Tucker. Here, Montpelier, the historic home of James and Dolley Madison, serves as backdrop for the world of steeplechase racing, with its thoroughbred horses, owners, and trainers. When two jockeys are killed within a week of each another--each stabbed through a playing card over his heart--Harry and her cohorts discover that it is also a world of high stakes and deadly payoffs where gambling, drug dealing, and long-standing feuds provide more than one motive for murder. Colorful, by now familiar characters, sharp humor, a clever plot, and talking, semi-anthropomorphic animals whose powers of observation and deduction often surpass those of their human associates (even the stable mice squeak out) make for fast-course entertainment. Dick Francis, move over. Barbara Duree
From Kirkus Reviews
Yet another visit to Crozet, Virginia, where postmistress/horsewoman Mary Minor Haristeen (``Harry'') lives with her cat, Mrs. Murphy, and a corgi named Tucker--talkative sleuths both (Pay Dirt, 1995, etc.). On this weekend Crozet's horsey set is headed for the annual Montpelier Steeplechase--Harry; her ex- husband Fair, the Steeplechase vet; Chark Valiant and his sister Addie, working now for wealthy Mim Sanburne's stable but due soon to inherit a fortune from their mother Marylou, who vanished five years ago and is presumed dead. The Valiants' lawyer Arthur Tetrick, once Marylou's suitor, is there, too, along with stable- owner Mickey Townsend. Jockey Nigel Danforth, Addie Valiant's steady date, to her brother's dismay, has a mid-race fracas with jockey Linda Forloines, who, with trainer husband Will, had been hired from the Sanburne stable and is now heavily into drug dealing. All of Crozet society is partying at the Sanburnes' house after the races when Nigel Danforth is found in the barn stabbed to death, a playing card placed on his chest. Days later, jockey Coty Lamont suffers the same fate--autopsies showing drugs in both victims. There's more--much more--as the animal kingdom, including a colony of barn mice, discusses the murders and reaches its own conclusions while Sheriff Rick Shaw, Deputy Cynthia Cooper, and Harry plod on to the perfunctory finale. Cheerful and chatty but ultimately cloying--stuffed with more than you may want to know about horses, racetracks, and the mind- sets of cats and dogs. The author's loyal admirers will no doubt love every minute of this fifth in the series. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"A tricky whodunit...as feline collaborators go, you couldn't ask for better than Sneaky Pie Brown."—The New York Times Book Review
"The Browns once again blend plot, character and atmosphere with plenty of wit and charm to create a delightful entertainment."—Publishers Weekly
From the Paperback edition.
From the Publisher
Authors of Murder at Monticello and Pay Dirt.A Mrs. Murphy Mystery.
"A tricky whodunit...as feline collaborators go, you couldn't ask for better than Sneaky Pie Brown."
--The New York Times Book Review
"The Browns once again blend plot, character and atmosphere with plenty of wit and charm to create a delightful entertainment."
--Publishers Weekly
From the Inside Flap
The annual steeplechase races at Montpelier, once the home of James and Dolley Madison, are the high point in the social calendar of the horse-mad Virginians of cozy Crozet. The race meet offers a cracking good time with old friends and a chance to get even--on the racecourse--with old enemies. Postmistress Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen will be in the thick of the action on this day of high spirits and fierce competition. But the glorious thoroughbreds and the pinks and greens and purples worn by the riders do not blind Harry to the dangerous undercurrents that start to surface. There's sure to be some emotional fireworks at Montpelier. Still, no one expects the day to end in tragedy.
Found dead in the main barn is one of the day's riders, a knife plunged through the jockey's heart. The only clue is a playing card, the Queen of Clubs, impaled over the fatal wound. Within the wealthy, tight-knit world of horse owners, trainers, and jockeys, the victim had both admirers and enemies.
Was the murderer's motive greed, drugs--a pervasive evil in the race world--or sexual rivalry? Luckily for Crozet's humans, the tiger cat Mrs. Murphy is right at home in the stable yard...and on the trail of the shocking truth. But will Harry catch on in time to stop a killer grown bloodthirsty with success?
In Murder, She Meowed Sneaky Pie Brown and her co-author, Rita Mae Brown, have penned another clever and sassy mystery that probes the depths of human depravity and the heights of feline genius.
From the Back Cover
The annual steeplechase races at Montpelier, once the home of James and Dolley Madison, are the high point in the social calendar of the horse-mad Virginians of cozy Crozet. The race meet offers a cracking good time with old friends and a chance to get even--on the racecourse--with old enemies. Postmistress Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen will be in the thick of the action on this day of high spirits and fierce competition. But the glorious thoroughbreds and the pinks and greens and purples worn by the riders do not blind Harry to the dangerous undercurrents that start to surface. There's sure to be some emotional fireworks at Montpelier. Still, no one expects the day to end in tragedy.
Found dead in the main barn is one of the day's riders, a knife plunged through the jockey's heart. The only clue is a playing card, the Queen of Clubs, impaled over the fatal wound. Within the wealthy, tight-knit world of horse owners, trainers, and jockeys, the victim had both admirers and enemies.
Was the murderer's motive greed, drugs--a pervasive evil in the race world--or sexual rivalry? Luckily for Crozet's humans, the tiger cat Mrs. Murphy is right at home in the stable yard...and on the trail of the shocking truth. But will Harry catch on in time to stop a killer grown bloodthirsty with success?
In "Murder, She Meowed Sneaky Pie Brown and her co-author, Rita Mae Brown, have penned another clever and sassy mystery that probes the depths of human depravity and the heights of feline genius.
About the Author
Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown series; the Sister Jane series; A Nose for Justice and Murder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle; In Her Day; and Six of One, as well as several other novels. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia.
Sneaky Pie Brown, a tiger cat born somewhere in Albemarle County, Virginia, was discovered by Rita Mae Brown at her local SPCA. They have collaborated on numerous Mrs. Murphy mysteries—in addition to Sneaky Pie’s Cookbook for Mystery Lovers and Sneaky Pie for President.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The entrance to Montpelier, once the home of James and Dolley Madison, is marked by two ivy-covered pillars. An eagle, wings outstretched, perches atop each pillar. This first Saturday in November, Mary Minor Haristeen--"Harry"--drove through the elegant, understated entrance as she had done for thirty-four years. Her parents had brought her to Montpelier's 2,700 acres in the first year of her life, and she had not missed a race meet since. Like Thanksgiving, her birthday, Christmas, and Easter, the steeplechase races held at the Madisons' estate four miles west of Orange, Virginia, marked her life. A touchstone.
As she rolled past the pillars, she glanced at the eagles but gave them little thought. The eagle is a raptor, a bird of prey, capturing its victims in sharp talons, swooping out of the air with deadly accuracy. Nature divides into victor and victim. Humankind attempts to soften such clarity. It's not that humans don't recognize that there are victors and victims in life, but that they prefer to cast their experiences in such terms as good or evil, not feaster and feast. However she chose to look at it, Harry would remember this crisp, azure day, and what would return to her mind would be the eagles...how she had driven past those sentinels so many times yet missed their significance.
One thing was for sure--neither she nor any of the fifteen thousand spectators would ever forget this particular Montpelier meet.
Mrs. Miranda Hogendobber, Harry's older friend and partner at work, rode with her in Harry's battered pickup truck, of slightly younger vintage than Mrs. Hogendobber's ancient Ford Falcon. Since Harry had promised Arthur Tetrick, the race director, that she'd be a fence judge, she needed to arrive early.
They passed through the gates, clambering onto the bridge arching over the Southern Railroad tracks and through the spate of hardwoods, thence emerging onto the emerald expanse of the racecourse circling the 100-acre center field. Brush and timber jumps dotted the track bound by white rails that determined the width of the difficult course. On her right, raised above the road, was the dirt flat track, which the late Mrs. Marion duPont Scott had built in 1929 to exercise her Thoroughbreds. Currently rented, the track remained in use and, along with the estate, had passed to the National Historic Trust upon Mrs. Scott's death in the fall of 1983.
Straight ahead through more pillared gates loomed Montpelier itself, a peach-colored house shining like a chunk of soft sunrise that had fallen from the heavens to lodge in the foothills of the Southwest Range of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Harry thought to herself that Montpelier, built while America labored under the punitive taxes of King George III, was a kind of sunrise, a peep over the horizon of a new political force, a nation made up of people from everywhere united by a vision of democracy. That the vision had darkened or become distorted didn't lessen the glory of its birth, and Harry, not an especially political person, believed passionately that Americans had to hold on to the concepts of their forefathers and foremothers.
One such concept was enjoying a cracking good time. James and Dolley Madison adored a good horse race and agreed that the supreme horseman of their time had been George Washington. Even before James was born in 1752, the colonists wagered on, argued over, and loved fine horses. Virginians, mindful of their history, continued the pastime.
Tee Tucker, Harry's corgi, sat in her lap staring out the window. She, too, loved horses, but she was especially thrilled today because her best friend and fiercest competitor, Mrs. Murphy, a tiger cat of formidable intelligence, was forced to stay home. Mrs. Murphy had screeched "dirty pool" at the top of her kitty lungs, but it had done no good because Harry had told her the crowd would upset her and she'd either run into the truck and pout or, worse, make the rounds of everyone's tailgates. Murphy had no control when it came to fresh roasted chicken, and there'd be plenty of that today. Truth be told, Tucker had no self-control either when it came to savoring meat dishes, but she couldn't jump up into the food the way the cat could.
Oh, the savage pleasure of pressing her wet, cold nose to the window as the truck pulled out of the farm's driveway and watching Mrs. Murphy standing on her hind legs at the kitchen window. Tucker was certain that when they returned early in the evening Murphy would have shredded the fringes on the old couch, torn the curtains, and chewed the phone cord, for starters. Then the cat would be in even more trouble while Tucker, the usual scapegoat, would polish her halo. If she'd had a tail, she'd wag it, she was so happy. Instead she wiggled.
Another Mrs. Murphy mystery involves the postmistress of Crozet, Virginia, and her mystery-solving pets. (After so many books in this series, it's hard to believe there are still folks to murder in Crozet.) Steeplechase jockeys are the victims this time. Since the series is co-authored by a cat, it's not surprising that the canine and feline detectives outperform the humans, but then they do have advantages like the ability to interview mice. Reader Kate Forbes gets into the spirit with her oh-so-cute animal voices. The Virginia hunt country is aptly portrayed, and the story is narrated with enthusiasm and dramatic skill. D.L.G. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
