A Nose for Justice-Rita Mae Brown

A Nose for Justice
Rita Mae Brown
Ballantine, Sep 21 2010, $25.00
ISBN: 9780345511812

When Wall Street tanked, many people lost their jobs including broker Magdalene “Mags” Rogers. Broke and disillusioned she returns home to her great-Aunt Magdalene “Jeep” Reed who owns the 10,000 acre ranch Wings in Nevada. She has bought more land and water rights to other property in order to stop more mansions from being built that would use up the water and destroy the ecosystem.

On the day that Mags comes home, someone ignites a pipe bomb to blow up property belonging to SSRM (Silver State resource management); responsible for seeing that there is enough water to supply the citizens of the state. A man concerned with Nevada’s water supply is found murdered in a hotel room. Not long after that another pump is blown up. An SSRM top official is killed. Some people who bought small plots in the Mini Mansion complex Horseshoe Estates are killed and one person is on the run. Others refuse to talk while the police begin to realize all these events are linked. Jeep and Mags becomes involved when a corpse is found on their property. They help the police with background information while their dogs can’t make their humans understand their concerns.

Baxter who belongs to Mags and King who owns Jeep have interesting amusing conversations with each other as each believes they are the top dog except when it comes to the safety of their two women. As the canines argue over who is the lead, ironically much of book involves human reed on a scale of The Treasure of the Sierra Madres. This is the first book in Rita Mae Brown’s new series and readers who enjoy the author’s Miss Murphy capers will love A Nose for Justice as the human and canine cast is strong and the whodunit exciting.

Harriet Klausner