Author: Tracy Weber, Author

Publisher: Midnight Ink

ISBN: 978-0-7387-4878-8


Tracy Weber, author of A Fatal Twist, has written three prior novels. (inside back cover, 2017) She won the Maxwell Award for her first one in this series, Downward Dog Mystery Series, titled Murder Strikes A Pose. Weber was also nominated for the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. She is a certified yoga trainer and owns Whole Life Yoga in Seattle, Washington. Tracy loves animals, Blackthorn cider, and yoga. She lives with her best friend and German Shepard puppy, Ana. To learn more about this author please visit her website at TracyWeberAuthor.com.

The story has several characters. They all interact with various parts of this plot and change as it twists and turns. Kate Davidson, who I am sure mirrors the author, is the main character. She owns a yoga studio and her live-in boyfriend, Michael, owns the pet store next door. Recently Kate has made the Segway into becoming a midwife of sorts or a doula. Kate also oftentimes finds herself in the midst of a murder and wonders why she seems to be at the crux of such sticky situations.

Kate and Michael have a large German Shepard with intestinal issues named Bella who enriches their lives and gives them pleasure. She has separation anxiety too and as such they have had to adjust their lives to keep her occupied and nearby. Thus, they alternately take her to their workplaces and/or leave her in their automobiles under the enclosed parking garages with water and shade.

Kate is just learning the ropes of becoming a doula and she thinks she is going to love it. She has a couple of clients she is in the process of creating birthing plans for and hopes that things go according to their plans. Kate is between her yoga studio for classes and the old and new birthing centers at the hospital and a brand new non-clinical setting called ABBA. She meets many interesting and experienced people as she learns this new trade.

One day someone leaves some adorable puppies on the front stoop of Michael’s store. He falls in love with them and brings them home with high hopes that Kate will too fall in love with hem and want to keep them. He has already named them Mutt and Jeff. Instead of falling immediately for them Kate takes a pragmatic approach and tells Michael that they can stay there temporarily. In the meantime they systematically become escape artists and tear up a good many household items that Kate and Michael own. Bella seems to take to them, but then her system is acting up and this makes Kate question whether these puppies in their household are a good thing in the short term too. She and Michael endeavor to find who has left them there and why.

Kate has some yoga clients who are also part of the new/old hospital staff and the new birthing center ABBA which is having a grand opening soon. At the grand opening Kate stumbles upon a dead body. It is a man and a doctor who is also the husband of one of Kate’s yoga class students. She has seen the two of them at odds because of the wife’s daughter and her drug problems and his short temper with such antics. She dislikes their dynamics and has seen the doctor with his lover too prior to his untimely death. Kate is torn between telling the wife and her sort of friend about this affair and leaving matters that are not her business alone. Kat also was one of the last people to see his wife leave the murder scene before she discovered the body.

As the police and the investigation progresses the police arrest the wife for the murder of the doctor. Kate cannot imagine that her friend could commit murder even if the cheating doctor deserved it. She sets out to prove her innocence. Will she succeed? Will she fail? Will the puppies find their mother or will they be destined to a sad life in the shelter?

Read the book. I enjoyed every page and was sad to see it end.