Title: To Fetch a Felon
Author: Jennifer Hawkins
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
Source:Â NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
Emma Reed and her beloved Corgi move from London to Cornwall with the dream of opening a tea shop—but first they’ll have to collar a criminal in the first book in a charming new series.
Emma leaves London and her life in high finance behind her and moves to an idyllic village in Cornwall, with its cobblestone streets and twisting byways. She plans to open a village tea shop and bake the recipes handed down to her from her beloved grandmother, and of course there’ll be plenty of space for her talking corgi, Oliver, to explore. Yes…talking. Emma has always been able to understand Oliver, even though no one else can.
As soon as Emma arrives in the village she discovers that the curmudgeonly owner of the building she wants to rent for her shop hates dogs and gets off on the wrong foot with Oliver. Although some might turn tail and run, Emma is determined to win her over. But when she delivers some of her homemade scones as a peace offering, she finds the woman dead. Together, Emma and Oliver will need to unleash their detective skills to catch a killer.
Is it any surprise a book with a talking corgi caught my interest? It shouldn’t be! The relationship between Emma and Oliver is sweet. She indulges his culinary appetite maybe a bit too much for my own tastes (fatty sausages!) but he is more than willing to remind Emma that she needs to go for a walk instead of spending all day looking at a laptop doing research.
Emma very purposefully moved to Trevena because of childhood memories and the perfect tea shop location. It’s a place where she can leave her old finance life behind and make a new life based on what she wants and not what she thinks she should do. The village does have tourists but the year-round residents seem to know everything about everyone else.
This mystery had more than one twist to it which kept me on my toes. Emma’s sounding boards, Angelique and Genny, are local business owners who are able to fill Emma in on the village gossip.
Some of the things I liked were the variety of characters (different ages and ethnicities), the mystery has several red herrings, Oliver’s willingness to help Emma even if he didn’t understand precisely what was going on, and the entire reason for Emma moving to the village doesn’t get derailed by the murder.