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Admittedly forgettable but cozy tale that's Richard Scarry meets Agatha Christie. It follows all the right mystery conventions with red herrings, misdirects, and a mounting body count but feels slightly less dire when it's a curmudgeonly toad with a knife in his back floating in the pond. I hate to admit it, but with a growing cast of characters I did come to appreciate the names being a tad on the nose. Vera Vixen is a fox, von Beaverpelt owns the sawmill, Lenore is a raven, and naturally the Chinese restaurant owner is a panda named Sun Li. Even as the author precedes the book with a note to not overthink things and simply resolve to consider the denizens of Shady Hollow as humans with particularly animalistic traits, I couldn't help but wonder how "relations" between a fox and bear might work out and exactly how a raven restocks shelves at the bookstore.