TITLE: Murder Always Barks Twice

AUTHOR: Jennifer Hawkins

GENRE: Cozy mystery

Murder Always Barks Twice by Jennifer Hawkins follows a tea shop owner in England and her excitable and cute talking Corgi Oliver. Yes. The dog talks.

I was a little leery of the book at first because I don’t usually read cozy mysteries with magical elements (except the Magical Flowe Shop Mysteries by Amanda Flower).

When I realized that only the main character Emma could understand Oliver I liked the idea a little bit better.

The talking dog doesn’t overshadow the story at all. In fact, it seems pretty natural to the entire book which otherwise is completely realistic and doesn’t feature supernatural or magical elements. I think it also helps that the dog talks like you might imagine a dog talks. He’s a smart dog but not too smart. He’s just smart enough to know that there’s certain things he should tell Emma that he’s seen or smelled but not smart enough that he’s the one solving the mysteries.

Everything he wants to say is exciting to him. So he’s not sitting there and talking like a proper gentleman you might say. He’s sort of adorable really.

The supporting characters in the book are plentiful and that can make things a little confusing at times. Sometimes I had to go back and remind myself who someone was. Emma either works with or knows all the characters in some capacity and even though the town is small there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of people who Emma interacted with throughout the book.

I can’t say any of the supporting characters were that memorable to me other than Oliver. The three women she spoke to most all sounded the same to me in my head. They were sort of interchangeable sounding boards for her, even though one was supposed to be her best friend and the others more like co-workers. They offered a way for Emma to work things out clues in her mind but I part of me feels a couple of them could have been removed and the story still could have carried on just as well. At the same time, having a lot of support rallying around the main character was nice as well.

To clarify – just because I thought some of the supporting characters could have been cut out, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like the characters. I really liked the co-owner of the tea shop – Angelique – and her daughter Pearl but they weren’t super important to the plot for me, other than when Emma helped find some clues.

Emma’s friend Genny offered even more support but I lost track of what her job actually was — I think she owned a restaurant in town. It wasn’t really important to the plot.

I really enjoyed how this book was built around a festival celebrating author Daphne DuMaurier’s book Rebecca, which was made into a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The plot of that book/movie was skillfully tied into the mystery of this book, adding to the complexity of the plot. I was impressed with how much history the author knew about the DuMaurier and the area she lived in.

After a quick search online I learned there is a literary festival in Fowey, England that is inspired by DeMaurier, who wrote many books besides Rebecca.

Rebecca was, however, her most famous, partially because of the movie version of it.

I felt like the amount of red herrings thrown out in this one was enough to keep me guessing and second-guessing right up until the end. I had figured out the culprit toward the end but I still wanted to be sure and see how the author wrapped up how they committed the crime.

I would definitely read future books by this author.