by
Ruth J. Hartman
About Hairless Hassles
Hairless Hassles (A Mobile Cat Groomer Mystery)
3rd in Series
Setting - Indiana
Level Best Books (April 22, 2025)
Number of Pages 280
Digital ASIN: B0F585MZ9Z
When two of Cat Groomer Molly Stewart’s pet parents are framed for murder, Molly will stop at nothing to keep her octogenarian friends out of jail. The fact that the body was discovered between Florence and Lottie’s houses doesn’t bode well for the ladies, or the fact that their Sphynx cats were way too interested in pawing at the body when it was discovered. Although Molly is ready to pounce on the real killer, will she be able to help them, or has the ladies’ continual gossip and spying on others finally landed them in hot water?
About Ruth J. Hartman
Ruth J. Hartman loves a good mystery. That’s probably why she happily gave up a life of cleaning other people’s teeth to write books. With several cozy mysteries under her belt, her main problem is keeping the characters straight – sometimes they have a tendency to hop on over to a different series, just for laughs
Over forty books later, consisting of romances, a children’s book, women’s fiction, and now cozy mysteries, Ruth still enjoys the thrill of taking the thoughts and images of her characters from her imagination to her computer screen.
She lives in rural Indiana with her husband, Garry, and their family of spoiled cats. Because of Ruth’s love for felines, every one of her books has at least one cat in it. Her cats, who’ve deemed themselves her editors, act like they’re supervising her writing, even though they’re often loafing off or napping.
Mystery and murder return to Whitewater Valley!
Hairless Hassles is the third book in author Ruth J. Hartman’s great Mobile Cat Groomer Mysteries, which features intrepid cat-mom Molly Stewart, and her feline family, Jasper and Percival. When elderly and very quirky clients, next-door neighbors Florence Makes and Lottie Campbell, become the main suspects in a murder, Molly can’t sit back and watch. She’s compelled to look deeper into the case and clear her friends’ names.
Molly Stewart, cat groomer extraordinaire and successful amateur sleuth, is once again at the right place at the right time for her cats to find the body of the latest victim of murder in the small town of Whitewater Valley, Indiana. The plot gets down to business straight away with the discovery of the victim occurring in the very first chapter. As the body is found in between the two octogenarians’ homes, the sheriff soon narrows his investigation to these two elderly ladies. While a highly doubtful conclusion from the start, the victim, Carlotta Sykes, also has a reputation for being unpleasant and was involved in a couple of nasty altercations in the days leading up to her death, so there are a few more plausible suspects to consider besides. Also, Florence and Lottie have provided some wonderfully reliable comic relief in this series from the start, and it would have been a sad day for them to have been the culprits. I went back and forth on some others, though, and it took the suspenseful confrontation between Molly and the real perpetrator to reveal the actual murderer.
As with the previous books, there is a plethora of locals
dropping in and out of the story throughout, and there is nice teamwork between
Molly and her friends to investigate and cross the red herrings off their list
of possible suspects. There are plenty of cats to ooh and ahh over, including
the Sphynx kitties, Eleanor and Helga, which are referenced in the book’s
title. Readers new to the series should have no trouble jumping in on this
story as each one reads as a standalone.
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