Old Dogs -- Donna Moore

If you've read Donna Moore's Go to Helna Handbasket, then you know how funny she can be, and now she's done it again. I'm not sure there'll be a funnier crime novel this year than Old Dogs. It's billed as a screwball mystery. While reading it, I was reminded a bit of What's Up, Doc, the film with Ryan O'Neal and Barbara Streisand from long ago. It's not rocks that keep moving around in this book, however. It's dogs. Not real dogs, but a couple of Tibetan statues of dogs. Along with the fake statues of dogs.

Another couple of old dogs are the two ex-hookers who want to steal the dogs from a Glasgow museum. La Contessa Letitzia di Ponzo and her sister Signora Teodora Grisiola. Okay, those aren't their real names. They're Letty and Dora, and since they're in their 70s they're a bit old for the hooking game. They're con artists now.

And they aren't the only ones after those dogs. Toss in their patsy, a Buddhist monk, a murderer, a couple of crematory workers, and a few others. Add a corpse that gets around almost as fast as the dogs (real and fake) or sometimes faster. There's more, but you need to read it for yourself. I see Judy Dench and Helen Mirren in the movie. Or Maggie Smith. They'd be perfect.