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A Nose for Justice is the first in a Rita Mae Brown spinoff series, with the Virginia setting she has been writing for decades and a heroine, Mags Rogers, who is a thirty-something former Wall Street trader returning home after a financial collapse. The mystery involves an old murder and a piece of land that has been quietly contested for generations.
Brown's strengths are the Virginia geography and the animal POV chapters, which she has refined across the long Mrs. Murphy series. The dog and the cat in this entry are recognizable inheritors of that tradition. The new human protagonist is sketched lightly in the first book; the series builds out her interior life across subsequent entries.
Three stars. A pleasant cozy with serious affection for its setting. Best read in series order.
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