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I received a copy of Probable Claws by Rita Mae Brown from the LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. I've read several other novels in the Sneaky Pie Brown series and this latest one didn't disappoint. I love how her pets
tale care of her. ( )

Let's start by saying that Mrs. Murphy (tiger cat), Tucker (corgi), and even new recruit Pirate (Irish wolfhound puppy) are amazingly patient with Pewter (fat gray cat). Just saying!

Harry Haristeen is working with architect Gary Gardner on improvements to her barn and workspace, and all seems as peaceful as it ever is around Harry. Then the illusion of peace is shattered as Harry, Gary, and Deputy Cynthia Cooper are standing outside Gary's office. A motorcyclist, completely obscured in bike leathers and an opaque helmet drives up, shoots Gary fatally, and drives away.

Cooper's sincere plea to Harry that she stay out of the investigation really just means Harry has to be more careful. And, really, the deputies would probably never have paid really close attention to Gary's stolen and recovered paper copies of the building codes for every jurisdiction he's worked in going back to his days at Rankin Construction...right?

But Gary's death is not the last--or, it turns out, the first. On Rankin's current construction site, a new building replacing one Rankin built--and Gary worked on--in the 80s, a body is found, dead from a very precise bullet, just as Gary was killed. Handwritten notes and dates in Gary's code books coincide with that death, and an earlier one that appeared to be just an early and unexpected heart attack.

Harry may be a little too eager to investigate herself rather than let the Crozet police do their jobs, and it's not always safe, but she is smart, observant, and attentive to detail. She also has her animals, whose noses and lower-to-the-ground view of the world pick up details she misses. And if usually they can't really tell her, they do sometimes manage to alert her to something crucial.

I really enjoyed this, even the bits set in 1786 and 1787, that don't directly bear on this story, they may have present-day repercussions in later Mrs. Murphy mysteries. All in all, this is an enjoyable mystery, and an enjoyable new entry in an ongoing series.

Recommended.

I borrowed this book from the local library. ( )

This was an okay entry in the "Harry" Haristeen series, although I found it harder to follow given that the story jumped back and forth between 1787 and 2017 without much connection. There were also some hints to the solution of the mystery which were never explained, which was confusing and frustrating.

While I had figured out the method by which one of the victims was murdered, I felt the revelation and capture of the murderer came about very abruptly and almost as a letdown after many chapters of building up the mystery. The animals, as always, were key players in saving Harry's life and capturing the murderer, and I look forward to reading more about Pirate.

I would recommend this book for long-time readers of the series, but it wouldn't be a good choice for a first-time reader. I received this book through the Library Thing Early Reviewers giveaway but that in no way influenced my opinion of it. ( )

Having read several of these books in the series, I did not like the additional story and waiting for it to make sense. The antics of the animals continue to make me chuckle. The today story was interesting and had enough questions to make it a good mystery. ( )