The Case of the Roasted Onion & The Case of the Tough Talking Turkey by Claudia Bishop

Claudia Bishop, author of the Hemlock Falls Mysteries, has started a new series
about a veterinarian who dabbles in murder on the side.

The Case of the Roasted Onion

The Case of the Roasted Onion introduces us to Dr. McKenzie and company. Dr. McKenzie has retired after a long and illustrious career at Cornell Veterinary College where he held the chair of the Bovine Science Department. He and his wife Madeline were looking forward to a quiet retirement when the good doctor made a serious financial error with his retirement fund, causing him to re-enter private practice.

When someone starts shooting equine vets he takes a personal interest in what everyone else thinks are random shooting. With the help of his wife Madeline, dog Lincoln, and two assistants, Joe Turnblad and Allegra Fulbright, he joins the ranks of amateur detectives.

What do these deaths have to do with a new portable coggins test that one of the victims were working on and several of the suspects have invested in? How does an injured puppy, the upcoming Earlsdown Three-day Event and the death of a horse at the event last year fit into the mystery? Will the obnoxious venture capitalist whom Dr. McKenzie would love to be the guilty party actually be guilty?

The Case of the Tough Talking Turkey

The Case of the Tough Talking Turkey is the second mystery from The Casebook of Dr. McKenzie. In this one Dr. McKenzie (veterinarian and burgeoning sleuth) and crew set out to solve the murder of Lewis O’Leary, owner of one of the largest turkey farms in the Northeast. O’Leary is rude, abusive and as cantankerous as they come, hated by all including his three sons and two daughters-in-law. On the surface all the evidence points to Gil Finnegan the local feed salesman whom O’Leary has accused of shorting his feed orders. Dr. McKenzie however thinks that the evidence is too pat and starts looking at O’Leary’s many enemies. The list is a long one.

First of all there is the family who stand to inherit, three sons whom he has always kept on short leashes and treated as slave labor. Then there are his two daughter-in-laws who hate him for the way he treats both themselves and their husbands. There is the animal rights activist who is determined to shut him down and the post doctorate student who needs him to sign off on the data from a study that he has been doing on the farm.

I enjoyed these stories because of the characters. The mysteries are what I call “cheats”. The killers in both books are peripheral characters who are barely mentioned. At the very end Dr. McKenzie names the killer like a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.

The next book in the series is The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat, due out in June, 2008

Claudia Bishop is also the author of the Hemlock Falls Mysteries.