So Vera knows how an investigation is supposed to go – even if Deputy Orville Braun is still reading the manual while his boss is off fishing. Before she came to sleepy Shady Hollow, she was an investigative reporter for a newspaper in a much larger town – where there was, both naturally and unfortunately at the same time – much more crime than Shady Hollow. Vera is an investigative reporter for the local newspaper, the Shady Hollow Herald. Vera’s not just a fox – although it turns out that the deputy police bear certainly thinks she is. The police – both bears – aren’t so much stumped as completely out of their depth.

The toad was such an argumentative old curmudgeon that it’s not all that big a surprise that someone finally got angry enough to kill him.īut there has never been a murder in Shady Hollow that anyone can remember. On her way to work one morning, Vera Vixen, new fox in town, discovers the dead body of Shady Hollow’s least popular resident, the cantankerous toad Otto Sumpf. Because this is the opening book in a series of murder mysteries – admittedly pretty cozy murder mysteries – where all of the characters are VERY anthropomorphized animals.

cover (at left) does a bit better job of conveying the darkness that is lurking inside the sleepy little town of Shady Hollow. And it IS a story about animals acting like humans, but it’s not nearly so twee as you think it will be. cover makes it look like this is going to be a somewhat twee story about animals acting like humans. Shady Hollow (the book as opposed to the town IN the book) is the kind of story that doesn’t lend itself to the easy description and characterization you think it will. It seems someone in the Hollow will do anything to keep her from solving the murder, and soon it will take all of Vera's cunning and quickness to crack the case. Vera finds more to this town than she ever suspected. As she stirs up still waters, the fox exposes more than one mystery, and discovers that additional lives are in jeopardy. The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter where it leads. Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow. The first book in the Shady Hollow series, in which we are introduced to the village of Shady Hollow, a place where woodland creatures live together in harmony-until a curmudgeonly toad turns up dead and the local reporter has to solve the case. Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard on January 25, 2022 Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalleyįormats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook Shady Hollow (Shady Hollow #1) by Juneau Black

Shady hollow juneau black