Paw
and Order by
V. M. Burns is a fun cozy mystery. She has found her rhythm
with engaging characters and enthralling plots. Humans and
four-legged animals only enhance the story.
Burns noted, “A lot of what happened throughout the
series has happened to me. Lilly moves to Tennessee because
I moved there. She gets another dog because I got another
dog. I was going to get a silver Toy Poodle and to name him
Rex, as Lilly did in the story. Instead, I fell in love with
another Toy Poodle that I named Chloe. Another similarity,
Lilly and I both are buying a house we were renting. The ideas
for this book came from my normal life. In both our lives,
dogs play such an important role.”
The story has Lilly Echosby convincing an eccentric poodle-loving
billionaire Archibald Lowry to sponsor a fundraiser for the
Eastern Tennessee Poodle Rescue. Unfortunately, he is murdered
at the event, leaving his puppy poodle an orphan. Lilly’s
best friend Scarlett “Dixie” Jefferson, a dog
trainer and dog show judge, who lives with her husband, Beau,
and two champion standard poodles, convinces Lilly to foster
the puppy. Her own beloved poodle, Aggie, named after Agatha
Christie, gets along well with the new puppy, renamed Rex,
after the mystery author Rex Stout. Falling in love with the
puppy, Lilly decides to adopt it. As she welcomes Rex into
her home, there are attempted poodle-nappings that were foiled.
Lilly begins to wonder if the attempts to steal Rex have anything
to do with the deaths that have recently occurred. Lilly,
Dixie, and Dixie’s dog club members will put their heads
together to help the police with their investigation. This
includes her boyfriend Red, her daughter Stephanie, and her
daughter’s boyfriend Joe Harrison, a K-9 handler for
the Lighthouse Dunes Indiana police force.
“I wanted to give a shout out to mystery author Rex
Stout. He wrote the “Nero Wolfe series.” I am
a big Agatha Christie fan, which is why Lilly’s poodle
is named Aggie, after Agatha Christie, but my second favorite
author is Rex Stout. The main character is a genius who is
a recluse living in his brownstone, New York place. He is
a private detective. But he doesn’t leave his home,
so he has an assistant, Archie Goodwin, that does all the
leg work.”
The characters are multidimensional, and readers learn a bit
more about them in each book. The plot is fun and engaging
with the added bonus describing specific breeds.
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