Sniffing Out Murder is the first book in the Bailey the Bloodhound mystery series by Kallie E. Benjamin (3/5 stars)

Sniffing Out Murder is the first book in the Bailey the Bloodhound mystery series by Kallie E. Benjamin.

I’ve seen people calling this a debut, but that’s not correct. The author also writes under the names Valerie Burns and V.M. Burns.

I figured out whodunit pretty quickly, it seemed fairly obvious to me. The romantic relationship with our POV character felt a little ham-fisted. It was a little too insta-love for me, and they got together far too quickly after some weird pacing leading up to it.

At least the dog was cute. He’s a registered emotional support animal and he and our POV character volunteer for pet-assisted reading programs. There’s also a good amount of diversity throughout our cast of characters in small town Indiana.

However, there was a random reference to one of the HP movies and it pulled me out of the story for a second. This book was published in 2023, there’s no reason to give that “brand,” and especially the author, more of an audience.

Rep: emotional support animal, queer (sapphic) side characters

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The Baily the Bloodhound Mystery series includes:

• Sniffing Out Murder
• Hounding a Killer