Rating: 2 1/2 stars

After a long night of maternity watch for Losa, a clouded leopard, Iris Oakley, three months shy of her own due date, hears a commotion at the elephant barn.

Upon her arrival, Iris is shocked to find zoo foreman and veteran elephant man, Kevin Wallace, deathly still on the stall floor of the zoo’s oldest and most trusted Asian elephant, Damrey.

Iris watches helplessly as the visibly-agitated Damrey paces restlessly around her enclosure, intermittently nudging the bleeding and unconscious Kevin with her feet and trunk. Staving off panic, Iris calls one of the elephant keepers for help, while pushing away the memory of her own husband’s death in the lion enclosure just six months before.

Kevin never recovers from his injuries and though the blame initially falls on Damrey, it’s not long before the scene is ruled a homicide and the rest of the zoo workers elect Iris to solve the mystery of Kevin’s murder.

Between the angry animal activists picketing the zoo, the unexplained disappearances of other animals and the fact that Kevin wasn’t exactly well-liked among his peers and co-workers, Iris is going to have a hard time narrowing it down to just one suspect.

It’s not exactly clear what credentials Iris has that would qualify her to solve a murder, but she seems to take it on with little protest. Iris works through her list of potential scenarios and main suspects, but does so at a meandering pace, with very few aha moments. Though Littlewood’s writing style is good enough to hold the reader’s interest, the plot itself isn’t exactly a riveting, edge-of-your-seat who dunnit.

Despite the slow-pace of the story line and characters that never really forge a connection with the reader, the mystery was intriguing enough to see through to the end.
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Hardcover: 250 pages
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press; 1 edition (August 1, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-1590587454