Peg and Rose Stir Up Trouble

Peg and Rose Stir Up Trouble (2023) Laurien Berenson (Senior Sleuths #2)

It’s been a couple months since Peg and Rose have mended their relationship, and so Rose has decided the best way to maintain their budding friendship is–to get Peg on a dating site so she can find love and companionship again.

The first several “matches” don’t go particularly well, but then Peg matches with Nolan, and things start out going very well.

Then, perhaps a little less so.

Once she’d plucked him out of his comfort zone and deposited him in hers, however, Nolan wasn’t nearly as appealing as he’d previously appeared. The fact that he’d been determined to continue explaining—incorrectly—how dog shows worked had really gotten on her nerves.

And then Nolan is killed in a suspicious hit-and-run, so Peg and Rose decide to investigate.

“I heard you’d gotten yourself involved in another mystery.”

“From whom?” Terry smirked.

“Izzy Hicks told Beth Sharp who told Edmund Bright. When he passed the news along to Crawford, I happened to overhear them.”

The two women are still working on their relationship, and both are realizing there has to be some give and take.

Last time they’d had a problem, she and Rose hadn’t spoken to each other for thirty years. Well, neither one of them had that kind of time to spare anymore. Peg figured that meant she had to be the bigger person.

Nolan and his partners really were despicable. So I could totally get behind the creative ways the women he’d hurt wanted to get back at him.

Dani chuckled. “I was hoping he’d be eaten by a shark. Slowly. Bite by bite.”

“You’re a bloodthirsty woman,” Blythe said with admiration. “If we could have figured out a way to make that happen, it would definitely have gotten my vote.”

The plus of this book is that there were far far fewer details about dog shows and dog breeding and training. And this time those details work worked into the story far more naturally.

“She said you were welcome to come with me as long as you behaved.”

Hope wagged her tail happily. She wasn’t worried. She’d been a model of decorum since birth. Besides, they both understood that of the two of them, Peg was the one more likely to misbehave.

I’m not sure I quite believed both the murderer and the final denouement of the mystery, but it was fun, so I’ll read the third book, which I already own.

Characters: Peg Turnbull, Rose Donovan, Peter Donovan, Melanie, Maura Nettles, Mrs. Mayberry, Donny, Nolan Abercrombie, Barbara Weatherly, Charlie Vargas, Detective Rodney Sturgill, Ruth Bixby, Maddy Bixby, Crawford Langley, Terry Denunzio, Izzy Hicks, Joe Danson, Ben Larson, Sandy Rivers, Gina Malone, Nell Perkins, Helen Woodruff, Blythe Cummins, Dani

Publisher: Kensington Books

Rating: 7.5/10

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