Have you heard of Anteater of Death?

The Easter season is upon us, and if you are looking for some good books to read for Easter, head on over to last week’s blog to grab a copy of a few of these Easter treats. If you are preparing for Pesach, you probably don’t have time this week, but they’ll still be here when you’re back!

Be sure to come back this weekend for not one but three new releases in the Parks Pat Mysteries series!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.

This week’s teaser comes from The Anteater of Death by Betty Webb. A very nicely-done cozy. I would definitely read more in the series. A cozy mystery with a zoo full of animals behaving like animals and humans behaving like savages. Plenty of suspects, lots of twists and turns, and pleasant diversions into zoo life, boats, and the protagonist’s relationships with her family, coworkers, friends, and new love interest. The main character was more three-dimensional than the protagonists in a lot of other cozy mysteries. As an animal lover, I enjoyed reading about the social behaviors of the animals and how the keepers loved and cared for them.

Minor spoiler — the anteater is not guilty.

In zoo parlance, that means if one gets loose, run for your life.

Betty Webb, The Anteater of Death

If Lucy, the pregnant Giant Anteater from Belize, didn’t kill the man found dead in her enclosure at California’s Gunn Zoo, who did? Zookeeper Teddy Bentley must find the real murderer before her furry friend is shipped off to another zoo in disgrace.

Then another human bites the dust, the monkeys riot, and the wolves go nuts. Things get worse when the snooty folks at Gunn Landing Harbor attempt to evict Teddy from the Merilee, her beloved houseboat.

That’s just the beginning. Her father, on the lam from the Feds for embezzling millions, gets targeted by a local gangster; and Caro, Teddy’s socialite and former beauty queen mother, who loathes Teddy’s dangerous job, starts introducing her to eligible bachelors. Then Teddy herself becomes a target for murder.