Book Bingo: First in Series
Duck Duck Danger by Max Parrott
A murder, a missing sculpture, and a nose for crime…
Angela Atkinson lives a peaceful life in the sleepy town of Hummings Hollow with her best friend and dog, border collie Ruff McPaw. However, life on Angela’s hobby farm at her little historic home might be too peaceful.
Barista by day in a town with no bars and approximately five-and-a-half churches, Angela and Ruff are the sympathetic ears that collect most of the town gossip-occasionally hearing things that were never meant for their ears-or anyone else’s. When not tending her farm in the rolling countryside, working in the coffee shop, or fending off concern from nieces who worry over their forty-years-old-and-still-single-aunt-Angela and Ruff are usually right on the tail of a mystery.
When Ruff finds retired-carpenter Randy Miller dead in the town lake following the disappearance of an expensive sculpture from a nearby exhibit, the dynamic duo believes there may be more to both crimes than meets the eye. With multiple leads and little cooperation from the police, will they be able to put the pieces together in time to keep an innocent person from going to jail?
Duck Duck Danger is the first book in the Ruff McPaw Mysteries series. If you adore intriguing cozy mysteries with beautiful small towns and a really adorable dog, then you won’t want to miss out on Angela and Ruff's fun and unforgettable cases.
I downloaded this book from Amazon for several reasons. It was free. I often enjoy cozy mysteries with animals, and this one has an interesting premise. It’s also the first in a series, so there were several spots on my Book Bingo card where it might fit. And the book cover is cute.
And, there, I’ve already covered all the good points about the book. The interesting premise is totally overwhelmed by poor writing and/or editing.
I have, quite seriously, read hundreds of fanfic stories that were better and more professionally written than this book.
The writing is choppy. There are changes of scene without a word of transition. The main character is in one place, and the next sentence she’s somewhere else.
It’s riddled with grammatical errors, including incorrect verb tenses and long, tangled, awkward sentences with misplaced participles.
There are an incredible number of ridiculous typographical errors. The dog puts his head on someone’s “laugh.” The main character’s expression is “more undistributed than she felt.”
There are descriptions that mean absolutely nothing. For example, main character standing in front of murder victim’s house: “This part of town was an idealistic suburbia when it was first built, but had since showed signs of its age. However, it was not run down by any means.” Huh?
There’s no backstory or explanation of why the main character is involved in a murder investigation. She’s an early 40s, single (never married) woman who works in a coffee shop and has a farm of rescue animals. There’s no indication that she’s a private investigator, although her father is apparently a retired policeman, and no one has asked her to look into the crime. Yet, after a murder, she starts investigating (including questioning suspects) and everyone just treats her as though she’s a PI. The police chief, after a token resistance to her involvement, even lets her sit in on suspect/witness interviews and examine the evidence gathered at the crime scene. Why? Who knows….
There’s some strange, psychic thing going on with her dog, but it’s never explained exactly how the connection works. Sometimes the story switches to the dog’s point of view, as though he has completely normal human thought processes and vocabulary. Sometimes the main character and her dog seem to be silently communicating and sometimes not.
And speaking of the dog, the main character is supposed to be a dog lover and animal rescuer … yet at one point in the story she feeds the dog chocolate cookies. What dog lover doesn’t know chocolate is toxic to dogs?
The mystery is rather ludicrous, too. Honestly, though, by the time I was about twenty percent through the book, I didn’t care.
Thankfully, the book was under 200 pages or I might not have been able to force myself to plow through it. After I finished, I did a little more investigation and found (not surprisingly) that it appears to be self published. Not only that, but this “first in series” book was published in February 2023 and now there are eight! in the series. Personally, I think the author is going for quantity not quality and must not even give his books a quick proof read before moving on to the next one.
Needless to say, I won’t be continuing this series. Which is kind of sad, because I just looked the author up on Goodreads this morning and found he has numerous books with fewer than 50 reviews there. Not tnis one, unfortunately; it has slightly over 50. If I get desperate, I know where to find a book to fill that square … but I’m not inclined to spend money on Max Parrott’s work.