Laura Crum's resilient heroine Gail McCarthy is back in the saddle for the tenth novel in this long running series.
This latest adventure, Chasing Cans, takes its name from the sport of barrel racing, which is a staple of
the rodeo circuit.
In the previous nine stories, Gail has been gainfully employed as an equine vet in Northern California's Santa
Cruz County. When not attending to her four-legged patients, Gail has played amateur detective, assisting the local
sheriff's office solve horse related crimes.
With an infant son to raise, Gail has taken some time off from her practice to stay home and care for Mac. But
even though she doesn't wander far from her ranch, her own horses and baby, Gail manages to get involved in another
nasty murder case.
In this instance, the action unfolds right next door to Gail's property. When Lindee Stone, Gail's not-so-nice
neighbor, dies when a horse she is training rears and falls on her, the vet doesn't believe it is an accident.
When a second rider meets a similar fate in the same corral but survives the fall, Gail is convinced something
other than the quirkiness of the horse is to blame. Launching her own informal investigation, Gail discovers that
not only are the two events connected, but they also point to a messy situation of "musical beds" that a group of
women and men she knows have been playing.