The Scent of Murder

Robin Light was behind the fish tanks of her Syracuse pet shop when the teenager walked in the door. With her electric blue hair, corpse-white lipstick, and in-your-face nose ring, Amy Richmond wasn't the type you could forget. But her appearance paled beside the message she had for Robin, "Murphy said you'd help me."Murphy was Robin's ex-husband who'd lived fast and died too young. And now, his 15-year-old daughter Amy was in trouble recently named the prime suspect in the sensational murder of her wealthy stepfather. Suddenly, the inveterate sleuth finds herself moving through the edgy, drug-infested world into which Amy has disappeared. Hitting up on her street connections, Robin plugs into a secret network of strippers, addicts, and runaways, where a low-life named Toon Town appears to be calling all the shots, and where Robin has to find a terrified young girl, before it's too late.From Library JournalA nervous teen-aged girl asks pet shop owner Robin Light (Chutes and Adders, LJ 7/94) to keep her albino ferret, then disappears. Robin finds out that the girl is wanted for murdering her step-dad. An appealing series.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistLast seen in In Plain Sight , Block's Robin Light seems unable to avoid murder, no matter how hard she tries to mind her own business, which happens to be a pet store in Syracuse called Noah's Ark. When a young girl comes into the store and demands that Robin board her pet ferret because Murphy said she would, Robin is speechless. Murphy, her husband who died of a drug overdose and left behind a mess that made Robin a chief murder suspect, has again risen from the dead. But before she can find out more, the girl drops her ferret and bolts out the back, just as two cops arrive in pursuit. Thus begins yet another intricately plotted mystery, this one involving the girl's murdered father and a connection to one more part of Murphy's life about which Robin knew nothing. Block's gripping denouements are especially good: they have previously starred a poisonous snake, a tarantula, and a bat. This one extends the streak, but this time we're not revealing the animal involved. Robin Light was recently named one of Booklist's Top Five Lesser-Known Female Sleuths . Soon she will have outgrown that category. Stuart Miller