Trick or Deadly Treat -- Livia Washburn

I always enjoy Livia Washburn's mysteries about Phyllis Newsome and her boarders.  Like the earlier books, this one's got a great small-town Texas setting, characters you feel like are old friends, and a solid mystery plot, but I liked this one even more than usual because one of the boarders, Sam Fletcher, adopts a dog. And it's not just any dog.  It's a dalmatian. 

[DIGRESSION ALERT] When I was young, my father brought home a dog that was mostly, but not quite all, dalmatian.  He called it Drift, but my younger brother couldn't pronounce that.  He said "Drip."  So that became the dog's name.  Now I know that a lot of you have had dogs that you think were pretty good dogs, and you are, of course entitled to your opinion, but Drip was the best dog ever, the smartest and most loyal and just the downright most lovable.  After Drip crossed the rainbow bridge, my parents had several other dogs -- dalmatians.  My brother, who has more dogs than I can keep up with, has a dalmatian among them even now.  Whenever a book or a movie or a story has a dalmatian in it, I'm almost guaranteed to like it. [END OF DIGRESSION ALERT]

The dog, Buck, proves to be the connection to the murder in the novel because its vet is accused of killing his wife (the vet's wife, not Buck's wife).  Sam can't believe the vet would kill anyone, but Phyllis has promised not to get involved in any more murder cases.  That leaves it up to Sam to do the investigating.  He knows he's not as good as Phyllis, but he's willing to go it alone if he has to.  Later in the book, however, he and Phyllis are hired by the vet's lawyer as consultants.  For the first time in the series, they're legit.  I have a feeling this will come into play in later books.

Naturally there's cooking along the way, and I'm hungry for white chili casserole right now.  Not to mention coconut cream pie cookies.  Recipes are included.

There's another development at the end of the novel that's related to cooking and that also promises to figure in upcoming books in the series.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.  If you haven't read any of the other books, you can jump right in with this one, but you'll get even more fun from it if you start at the beginning of the series with A Peach of a Murder.  The whole series is highly recommended.