Santa Clawed

By Rita Mae Brown

Another in the Mrs. Murphy mystery series, this one finds Harry and her pets getting ready for Christmas. As luck would have it, when Harry goes to buy a Christmas tree, her dog, Tucker, finds a dead body at the Christmas tree lot and once again Harry and the pets are in the thick of another murder investigation.
In this case, the dead man has had his throat cut and an obol, an old coin, inserted under his tongue. He is also a monk, from a local order that runs a hospice for the terminally ill, the Brothers of Love Hospice. Recognized in the community for their good works, the monks seem to be unlikely targets for murder and yet before much longer a second monk is found murdered in the same way, also with a coin under his tongue.
Turns out the saintly monks may not be so saintly. The two dead monks came to the order later in life after having messed up in the secular world. And they aren't the only monks in the Brothers of Love with checkered backgrounds.
Things go from bad to worse when Harry's pets lead her to a stash of cash hidden in an old wood lot, but someone catches Harry off guard and bashes her in the head, leaving her unconscious in a bad snowstorm with only her pets to stand by her.

Reading about Harry's life in the hills of Virginia is always entertaining. Rita Mae Brown paints Crozet as the very appealing kind of down home small town that many would like to escape to, if you can ignore all the dead bodies. Well, it's a mystery series and that means you have to have some dead bodies. The murder plot drives the story but the best part of the Mrs. Murphy series is Brown's portrait of small town life in rural Virginia.

For another review see Lady Rhian's blog at Blogspot.