The identification of the woman found murdered on Whiteview Sands poses more questions than it answers. Emma Tysoe was a respected psychologist and an official criminal profiler with several successful cases to her credit. Why was she sun-bathing alone so far from home? How did she get there? Who is the mysterious 'Ken' in her private life? What was the murder weapon? Why did the man who noitce she was dead then completely disappear from the scene?
Recently enlisted by her former baby-sitters as the newest member of their club, Mallory resents their overly critical appraisals of her first jobs and decides to form her own sitter service with her best friend, Jesse.
Clement's assured cozy debut introduces an appealing heroine, 32-year-old Dixie Hemingway, who's given up her stressful job as a sheriff's deputy in Sarasota, Fla., to become a professional pet sitter. When Dixie calls early one morning on her latest client, a silver-blue Abyssinian named Ghost, she finds a dead man face down in the cat bowl. The contact person (a requirement when you leave an animal with a sitting service) has no clue where Ghost's owner, gorgeous Marilee Doerring, could have gone or why her locks were changed before she left.
Ex-deputy Dixie Hemingway still mourns the loss of her young daughter and cop husband in a freak accident three years earlier, but takes solace in her pet-sitting job in Siesta Key, Fla., in Clement's thoughtful and at times somber fourth animal-themed cozy (after 2008s Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues). Eager for friendship, Dixie forms an immediate bond with an attractive new neighbor, Laura Halston, who has a cat named Leo. When someone stabs Laura to death in the shower, Dixie suspects Lauras soon-to-be ex-husband, a sadistic surgeon skilled with a scalpel.
Dixie, no relation to you-know-who, is helping an injured and cantankerous man take care of Cheddar, his orange shorthair cat. Soon Dixie finds herself totally smitten with the man's adorable infant great-granddaughter. But the baby's naive young mother has enough knowledge about certain powerful local big-money honchos to send them to prison for life, and they are willing to do anything, even kill her baby, to shut her up.
