THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601110547
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: SHIRLEY PRESBERG
LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
PAY DIRT
RITA MAE BROWN WITH SNEAKY PIE BROWN
Bantam Books. 251 pp. $21.95.
Charlottesville novelist Rita Mae Brown (with the help of her cat Sneaky Pie Brown) continues her popular cat and dog adventures with Pay Dirt, a mystery that takes place in the small Virginia town of Crozet.
Mrs. Murphy, a cat, and her friend Tee Tucker, a corgi, are bored until someone kills a mysterious biker who shows up in town looking for his girlfriend. The mayhem continues when a bank executive is killed after a virus infiltrates the computers at Crozet National Bank.
Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, unwilling to believe the adults capable of solving these crimes, decide to conduct their own investigation. The animals listen to the town gossip as they sit in the post office where their owner works. After following clues on their own, they manage to get the adults' attention and steer them toward the murderer.
Cat and dog lovers may be enchanted with the linguistic abilities of the animals in this novel, but their conversations are a bit precious, for example:
``You'd think that they'd realize that the Almighty is a cat. Humans are lower on down in the chain of beings.''
``They'll never get it. Too egocentric.''
These overly cute comments quickly annoy. Whatever happened to ``Meow?'' by CNB