COLD SNAP

A murder disrupts the peaceful mountain town, and an irrepressible Norwegian Forest cat, along with a posse of dogs and a potbellied pig, is determined to find the culprit in this mystery.

Schneider’s clever tale opens with feline Bijou Bonanno discovering a lifeless body lying by the river. The usually feisty cat is stunned, as she immediately recognizes the face of the deceased; readers, however, don’t learn the victim’s identity until well into the novel. After this initial discovery, the story jumps back two months, recounting events leading up to the dastardly deed. Bijou, who takes her “Viking” heritage quite seriously, is an entertaining narrator, and within a few pages she’ll have readers chuckling; as a result, they’ll be willing to toss disbelief to the wind when they find out that she’s the manager of the town of Grey Birch’s Fox Burrow Pet Inn, assisted by her tiny Pomeranian partner, Skunk. (Both animals belong to Spencer Bonanno, the inn’s winsome human owner.) One day in early spring, a new guest, Eddy Line, enters the inn with his two pets—Hamlet, a baby potbellied pig, and Fennec, a frightened rescue pit bull puppy. Eddie’s just purchased the town’s old firehouse, where he plans to open the Witching Flour bakery; renovation of the building’s upstairs apartment isn’t yet complete, so he and his animals will be staying at the inn. Then somebody cuts the gas line to the firehouse, leaving a threatening note behind. There is a genuine mystery at the heart of the novel, and a disturbing animal-cruelty issue rears its head at one point, but for the most part, this is a jovial fantasy jaunt. The four-legged protagonists, including a few additional secondary players from the forest, are smart characters and have articulate conversations, and Bijou, the fearless, ever imaginative leader of the pack, is snarky but lovable and kind. Schneider is generally a skillful wordsmith, although her persistent use of the first-person subjective pronoun (“Tahereh walked over and gave Spencer and I a one-armed hug”) is surprising and disappointing.

A sweet and often amusing animal-centered whodunit.