Rating: 
Summary: Murphy, Tucker, and Pewter ride again...
Review: First off I'd give another half-star rating, as I did enjoy the book, and I must really like the series a lot, as I keep coming back for more.
I won't summarize the plot, as that is the job of the book jacket, and many of the other reviewers have done an excellent job of that already.
I do really enjoy learning about something besides forensics (although those are pretty fascinating too), during the course of a mystery...for instance, I had no IDEA that fox hunting was such a complicated sport, I thought you just got on the horse, used good manners in the field, and chased the critter. Typical nawthenah...
The beauty, grace, complexity and depth of Southern culture is presented here in Ms. Brown's Crozet series and while of COURSE it is seen as superior to that of the Northerners and Westerners, she does not rub your face in it to the point where you just dismiss Crozetians as small-town Southern Snobs.
When having animals use human speech to communicate between species, it is difficult not to fall into either omniscience or over-cuteness, and both the Brown ladies seem to negotiate this fence line fairly well. What I have trouble with are the little errors... for instance, what sex IS Harry's horse Gin Fizz? In one book, she is a mare, in another he is a gelding, and in this book, s/he is both. Now THERE is a mystery if you like....
Also, Harry, who is by her own admission emotionally inhibited, is very much out of character with her accusation "You did it!" directed at the murderer during the burial. This may be sort of rationalized by the preceeding events just sort of blowing the cork out of the bottle, but it is not in character for Harry, who usually does think things through...and THEN she goes ahead and does something risky.
All in all, this was an improvement over the last two of the series, as things are MOVING again. I am looking forward to the next one...and must admit I AM curious as to what kind of foal Boom-Boom's mare will drop.
Rating:
Summary: Details could bog down even diehard fans
Review: A man I know refuses to read any book written by a female, convinced that women feel the need to add too much detail to the narrative. He says, "If I'm driving down the road, I don't care if I pass a yellow house with a white picket fence and a dog tied up in the yard. I just want to get to where I'm going." While I've shaken my head at his chauvinistic view, it has caused me to pay more attention to differences in writing styles. Maybe the variety is somewhat gender-based, maybe it isn't."Whisker of Evil" includes a lot of detail that doesn't always seem to "get us where we're going." The murder on the first page demands our immediate attention. And those of us who are fans of this series will enjoy watching Harry, Fair, Susan, Miranda, Cooper, Rich, all the animals and the elite of the Crozet equine community figure out what's going on in their neighborhood. But there are multiple instances when the action is stalled by extraneous explanation and back story. It happens often enough that I took notice and wondered how much of the information I'd have to recall down the line. Having faith in the author, I continued on. If not for that, I could easily have abandoned the book and gone on to something else. Maybe I've been reading too many male authors and/or quicker and shorter mysteries lately! Or maybe my reading tastes are changing. I've read many of Brown's books with pleasure. I love her technique of sharing the animals' communications through the use of italics. This is the first Mrs. Murphy Mystery that was slow for me. It won't stop me from reading her future work, for I especially want to know what ensues from the recent changes in Harry's life. My advice is to pick up this volume knowing that there's A LOT going on in it. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...)
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable Dialogue and an Engaging Protagonist
Review: Handsome horse breeder Barry Monteith is found with his throat slit near Potlicker Creek in Crozet, Virginia --- shocking news made even more shocking when the autopsy reveals Monteith had been infected with rabies. As fear of that silent killer increases, along with the fear of a human killer, the residents of Crozet band together with their usual picnic and potluck lunches --- but some among them are afraid that the animal citizens of the town may be dangers. This notion does not sit well with either Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen or her beloved menage of trois pets: corgi Tee Tucker, tiger cat Mrs. Murphy and the weight-challenged gray feline Pewter. Harry, happily toiling away at the Crozet post office where she has worked since graduating from Smith with an art history degree fifteen years ago, can't imagine that the well-cared-for domestic animals of her beloved hometown are carrying an infectious disease --- any more than she believes that the long-ago disappearance of local horsewoman Mary Pat Reines was a simple accident. When Harry (accompanied, of course, by Tee, Mrs. M. and Pewter) finds Mary Pat's distinctive signet ring in Potlicker Creek, her formidable brains begin clacking and humming. Despite another hideous rabies-related death and the warnings of her obviously besotted ex-husband Fair, Harry (whose brains don't get much of a workout at the P.O.) starts to put all kinds of dangerous pieces together. In the first few Sneaky Pie collaborations, the animal dialogue sometimes felt forced and/or got in the way of the plot; in this one, it's downright enjoyable to "listen" as the feisty little Corgi interacts with an owl, or Mrs. Murphy talks to a fox family. However, all this animal talk isn't just for cuteness's sake. The kicker in all of Rita Mae and Sneaky Pie's books is that the animals figure things out well before the humans do --- and they also figure out ways to help those humans save face. If only the humans could do the same thing for each other consistently. Brown has a lot of homo sapien fish to fry here, from Harry and Fair's awkward second courtship, to a slightly dim policeman's meddling, to the real nature of happiness and what we do for love (in this case, make an unlikely adoption). From time to time, forensics gets in the way of plot progression --- sections with details of rabies transmission and horse breeding, for example, are a bit too dense to wade through and will make readers itch for another catfight between Mrs. Murphy and Pewter. But the good news is that this reader is itching to read the next book and learn what comes next for the engaging Harry, a modern woman with an old-fashioned temperament. --- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick
Rating: 
Summary: great
Review: I always enjoy Rita & Sneaky Pie books. I thought this was one of the best. I hate to see Harry & Miranda leaving the P.O., but now I can't wait to see what they'll be up to next book. Of course I was hoping Harry would finally say yes to Fair, but maybe in the next one. I just don't want her to do it out of desparation. I want her to realize how much he loves her and how much she loves him. I guess I'm just a romantic.
Rating:
Summary: great
Review: I always enjoy Rita & Sneaky Pie books. I thought this was one of the best. I hate to see Harry & Miranda leaving the P.O., but now I can't wait to see what they'll be up to next book. Of course I was hoping Harry would finally say yes to Fair, but maybe in the next one. I just don't want her to do it out of desparation. I want her to realize how much he loves her and how much she loves him. I guess I'm just a romantic.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe my last Mrs. Murphy book.
Review: I have read all of the Mrs. Murphy mystery series, but this may be my last one. Rita Mae Brown has been getting a little too preachy about her own personal philosophies and this book strongly and needlessly sermonized some of her own beliefs, which I don't agree with. I almost closed the book once or twice. I hope this trend doesn't continue, as I enjoyed her past books.
Rating:
Summary: Looks like change is gonna come
Review: I have to admit that as much as I used to the love the Mrs. Murphy myseries I was starting to lose interest. Perhaps Rita Mae Brown was too because the mystery part of the story seemed phoned in for this book and the last two that preceded it.
And then Brown did something a little different with Whisker of Evil that might restore the freshness to the series. She takes away some of the idealism from Crozet. To tell the truth the dear little town isn't that nice a place. It makes St. Mary Mead look like Disneyland. You're more likely to get killed there than any place else in fictional Virginia and being acquainted with Harry is like wearing a red shirt on a classic Star Trek episiode(you know the old joke: Kirk, Spock and Crewman Jones beam down to a newly discovered planet. Guess who gets killed in the first five minutes?).
She also takes Harry and gives her a bit of a rest. The people who really solve this case are the ones you'd least likely expect including one person whom you aren't supposed to like.
The best thing in the book is how she finally shakes Harry up and gets her out of the post office and hopefully into what may turn out to be a mature relationship with her ex. If this series is going to go on Harry has got to grow up.
Brown also gives Fair something to do except stand around waiting for Harry to forgive him. Four years of martyrdom was getting to be unbearable.
There are some familiar flaws in the book. I figured who the killer was way too early. Brown doesn't even try to give you a red herring. I would have preferred to see some personal growth in the characters. None of these people ever change. Must Boom Boom always be the high class tramp? When is Harry ever going to grow up? Is there one person in this town with strong convictions about faith or love?
As for the book's strong points they're obvious. It's all about the animals. Mrs. Murphy, Tucker, Pewter and their friends are wise and charming. The beauty of Crozet's countryside and its past are almost characters in themselves. Still it's obvious that this series has gotten a little stale. Hopefully the seeds of change were sown int this book. I'll give the next one a shot.
Rating:
Summary: Whisker of evil
Review: I won't summarize the plot since that's been done already. Anyone familiar with the series can expect the things that make it stand out: distinct setting and characters, plenty of colorful details about country life and of course all those (silently) outspoken animals offering their perspective.
It's fun and an easy, comfortable read. It's a solid entry in the series but not a stand out. I LIKED it but didn't LOVE it for several reasons:
I. The plotting was loose and too often swamped by extraneous details. Often they're rather *interesting* details but enough already. (It's the Diana Gabaldon Syndrome. Colorful details are nice--within limits.) I also guessed the criminal halfway through the book. It really was pretty obvious.
II. This may be a bit unfair, as an overflow from RMB's "foxhunting " series, but her insularity is beginning to interfere with my enjoyment of her books. Her quasi-religious fervor about the absolute superiority of 1. rural life, 2. rural life in VIRGINIA, and 3. those born, reared and preferably with deep family roots in Virginia is wearing thin. It's great to love and be proud of one's home but condescension toward the rest of the world becomes jarring after a while, especially when it's done without the slightest satirical flicker.
Not huge minuses, but there wasn't anything socko enough about the rest of the book to counteract them. All in all, pretty good. You'll like it if you're a series fan.
Rating: 
Summary: The title's the best part!
Review: I, too, read all of the Mrs. Murphy mysteries. I found this one difficult to get involved in and was probably a hundred pages into it before I did. The story was interesting, as were the facts about rabies; I also liked that there are some changes for Harry in this installment. But distractions abound. First, the novel is not well written. Brown wants her characters to speak naturally, but she also wants to provide her readers with necessary information. Consequently, she has natural dialogue, but then adds information in the form of "she mentioned," etc., interrupting the flow of that natural dialogue. Brown also tends to be somewhat repetitive with information (for instance, about Cazenovia and Elocution). I don't recall if the narrator was omniscient in her other books; in this book, the omniscience takes the form of statements like, "Tazio liked Paul"-often information unrelated to the dialogue and so general and bland as to not add to the story. "Whisker of Evil" also had more of a religious slant than the previous books. It starts with Harry finding a dying man and talking to G-d. Various characters-not just Miranda-quote scripture. And the animals, too, discuss religion. (It's pointed out that each animal believes that his or her own species is G-d.) Bottom line: read it for the plot developments on Harry, so you won't be lost when the next book comes out!
Rating:
Summary: The title's the best part!
Review: I, too, read all of the Mrs. Murphy mysteries. I found this one difficult to get involved in and was probably a hundred pages into it before I did. The story was interesting, as were the facts about rabies; I also liked that there are some changes for Harry in this installment. But distractions abound. First, the novel is not well written. Brown wants her characters to speak naturally, but she also wants to provide her readers with necessary information. Consequently, she has natural dialogue, but then adds information in the form of "she mentioned," etc., interrupting the flow of that natural dialogue. Brown also tends to be somewhat repetitive with information (for instance, about Cazenovia and Elocution). I don't recall if the narrator was omniscient in her other books; in this book, the omniscience takes the form of statements like, "Tazio liked Paul"-often information unrelated to the dialogue and so general and bland as to not add to the story. "Whisker of Evil" also had more of a religious slant than the previous books. It starts with Harry finding a dying man and talking to G-d. Various characters-not just Miranda-quote scripture. And the animals, too, discuss religion. (It's pointed out that each animal believes that his or her own species is G-d.) Bottom line: read it for the plot developments on Harry, so you won't be lost when the next book comes out!
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