Thinkingdog Publishing

You need an animal in a cozy mystery. Dog, cat, skunk — honestly, it doesn't matter. Pick the one that makes you smile when you type it. Why? Because people are gonna people. They'll lie to your sleuth. They'll withhold the one detail that cracks the case. They'll show up charming on page ten and turn out to be hiding something rotten by page ninety. That's what makes a mystery a mystery — human beings are unreliable, self-interested, and endlessly capable of surprising you in the worst way. You know these folks, they hang out everywhere you go. Everybody who has a pet at home, knows they will not. The animal is the one steady heartbeat on the page. When every suspect is spinning a story and the reader can't trust a single face in the room, the dog is still just a dog. The cat still wants the sunbeam. Anyone who’s ever shared their life with a pet will tell you this. Whatever chaos the humans stir up, the animal stays exactly, reliably itself — and t...