[Secret Sleuth 02] • Death on Torrid Ave.

Paws for a murder

Far from the publishing world that once defined her, Sheila Mackey has found a new life, a new home, and a new love. The love has four legs, a plumey tail, and a lot of fur. Meet Gracie the rescue collie. Too smart for her own good – certainly too smart for Sheila’s good, when Gracie discovers a dead body during a dog park gambol.

Especially since Sheila delves into mysteries surrounding this dead body ... only to discover the new guy at the Torrid Avenue dog park is a barely retired cop. Not good for an amateur sleuth with a big secret of her own that she intends to keep. She’s not exactly who she says she is. At least, she’s not who she pretended to be for 15 years.

Will Sheila untangle the murder mystery before her secrets are untied, exposing her previous identity to her new small-town neighbors?

And will Gracie ever learn the “Quiet!” command?

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This whodunit with humor is the second book in USA Today bestselling author Patricia McLinn’s new cozy mystery series, Secret Sleuth, which begins with a murder on a transatlantic cruise in Death on the Diversion. In Death on Torrid Ave. and later books, accidental investigator Sheila Mackey returns to dry land in the Midwest, where mysteries abound in her new small-town home.

On the spectrum of McLinn's mystery novels, the Caught Dead in Wyoming cozy series is in the middle, Proof of Innocence is edgier (and has more romance), and Secret Sleuth is a bit less edgy.