A Cozy Mystery series by Juneau Black (a collective pseudonym for Jocelyn Koehler and Sharon Nagel) set in the village of Shady Hollow in a world inhabited by sentient animals. When a curmudgeonly old toad turns up dead from poisoning, Vera Vixen, a reporter for the local paper, realizes she has a lead on the most exciting story the town has seen in years. Things spiral outward from there.
The series currently includes five novels:
- Shady Hollow (2015)
- Cold Clay
- Mirror Lake
- Twilight Falls
- Summers End (July 2024)
And two short holiday specials:
Tropes featured in this series include:
- Accidental Hero: Bradley Marvel just happens to run into Vera and rescue her from a probably otherwise-fatal circumstance, but only because he was already following her for unrelated reasons.
- Accidental Murder: Otto Sumpf wasn't an intended target, that was Reginald von Beaverpelt, he just found a bottle of poisoned wine and drank it, Ruby actually feels some remorse over it.
- Alliterative Name: Vera Vixen, also something of a Species Surname.
- Always Murder: With the exception of the holiday specials, there's always a murder, causing consternation at the sudden spate in an otherwise quiet little town. But subverted in Twilight Falls, where the murder is a frame-up by the "victim".
- Ambiguous Time Period: Its published as "Vintage Crime", but it's difficult to tell exactly what vintage. Being set in a small town in what is implied to be Upstate New York (in a World of Funny Animals) makes it even harder. Most of the time it seems to be vaguely at the end of The Gilded Age, with a wealthy sawmill owner modeled after the Astor, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt families, and cars don't decisively appear (ambiguously "a wagon" does but most people walk or fly with wings), as well as etiquette schools. One character is a holdover from The Wild West. But 1950s style diner uniforms appear, modern romantic mores, and offhand references to modern books complicate it. And Joe's coffee shop does flavoured lattes, which is pretty 21st century.
- Contrived Coincidence: In Cold Clay Julia Elkin's bones happen to be discovered at the same time her murderer returns to Shady Hollow, over a decade after her disappearance.
- Cunning Like a Fox: Vera is a quite crafty fox, arguably better at investigation than Shady Hollow's actual police.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Edith von Beaverpelt absolutely disapproves of Anastasia dating the hired handyman purely out of classism. Eventually she relents and says she's had a change of heart due to seeing them being willing to sacrifice everything for each other, but it probably doesn't hurt that Stasia will be coming into a lot of money at a time when the family needs it most.
- Detective Animal: Vera counts, despite being a reporter, as a fox who investigates crimes.
- Disease Bleach: The silver furred mink Octavia Grey is speculated to have suffered this when Vera learns her fur color isn't natural. And alludes that she could be the dark-furred robber Edith reported, she confirms that she lost her fur color after a snake bite.
- Disney Villain Death: Ruby stumbles off the side of a cliff, grabs the edge, actively refuses Vera's help, and falls to her death as a result.
- Fiery Cover Up: When Octavia realized Orville and Vera were on to her, she planned to drug them and burn down her fraudulent etiquette school with them in it.
- Forgotten Trope: The "young ladies" school. In Cold Clay an etiquette school moves into Shady Hollow, confusing most of the fairly provincial locals who already consider themselves fairly polite. Sure enough it turns out to be a scam by a Con Artist.
- Funeral Banishment: At Reginald von Beaverpelt's funeral his widow Edith throws a scene when Ruby, his suspected mistress, shows up and demands that she leave.
- Furry Lens: Invoked but averted; the Author's Note at the start of the first volume says that if you really have an issue with a town full of animals, you can think of them as humans with animal characteristics, but the opening scene of Gladys finding Otto's body while flying over the pond is pretty hard to read that way.
- Gold Digger: Ruby Ewing was suspected of having an affair with Reginald von Beaverpelt, for whom he embezzled a significant amount from his business but she claims they had something more than that, and she only murdered him because he wouldn't leave his family for her.
- The Hermit: Otto Sumpf was primarily know in town as a grumpy alcoholic toad who hid out in his swamp, but at his funeral it's revealed that he was a retired spy and his journals show that he was quite well-informed on the town's goings-on. With Vera even consulting his journals for clues on later cases.
- Intrepid Reporter: Vera knows when she's onto a story, and will stop at nothing to pursue it, even when her editor and the police try to dissuade her.
- Lighter and Softer: The holiday shorts have lighter subject matter than the murder mystery novels. "Evergreen Chase" is about a stolen solstice tree, while "Phantom Pond" just has a missing child.
- Mature Animal Story: Set in a town of eccentric Funny Animal characters, and features murder and at the very least clear references to sex.
- Missing Mom: Julia Elkin vanished twelve years before the start of the series, leaving her husband Joe and son Joe Junior behind. It was assumed that she'd gotten restless in small town Shady Hollow, but at the start of Cold Clay her skeleton is unearthed in the local orchard.
- Must Have Caffeine: All of Shady Hollow are avid coffee drinkers, Joe's coffee shop being the common gathering place for most of the village, but Vera consumes more than most given how many all-nighters she pulls. Her introductory scene even has her brewing a pot of pungent black coffee in the newspaper breakroom.
- Non-Idle Rich: Esmeralda von Beaverpelt gets a job as a waitress at Joe's while her mother and sister just spend their inheritance. She's also generally the most agreeable of the family.
- Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: Otto's corpse is stabbed to hide the fact that he died by poison, but the coroner finds the poison anyways.
- Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo: The villain of Cold Clay serves Vera a cup of tea with sleeping pills in it, but Vera switches cups and feigns drowsiness while she gloats.
- Police Are Useless: Deputy Orville is fairly competent, just not as good as Vera. Chief Meade on the other hand is more interested in fishing and solving problems quickly than his job.
- Production Foreshadowing: Each of the books has had an off-handed reference in it to a location or character which will be focused on in the next book.
- Rascally Raccoon: The town's resident thief is a raccoon named Lefty, though his girlfriend tries to shape him up.
- Really Gets Around: Ruby Ewing is known for having multiple relationships, which is why she was cast out of her flock and felt like an outsider in Shady Hollow as well.
- Revealing Cover-Up: Vera points out that if Otto hadn't been stabbed to hide that he was poisioned, the police probably wouldn't have realised he'd been murdered at all.
- Rich Bitch: Anastasia von Beaverpelt is rude, snobby, and generally unpleasant. Her mother Edith has a bit more tact but has a temper that shows at times.
- Shout-Out:
- The proprietor of Nevermore Books in town is a raven named Lenore.
- Lenore's notes on how to solve a murder reveal she's a Sherlock Holmes fan (the first is a paraphrase of "never theorise without facts", the second of "once you have eliminated the impossible", and the third is not to take a vacation at Reichenbach Falls.)
- Stalker with a Crush: Bradley Marvel, egotistical big-city mystery writer, sees Vera's looks and writing skills and immediately begins to follow her everywhere, intending to convince her to return to the city with him. She drops increasingly pointed hints about why she left and how she's taken before finally snapping and letting him know. He leaves her alone, but makes "her" the victim in his next book in revenge.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Anastasia von Beaverpelt seems like a bit of a snob and an airhead in the first book, but not terribly irritating. By the second, her arrogance and rudeness have been cranked up significantly. True, she didn't get her sister's bit of character development and losing her father and a good deal of money hit hard, but it's treated as if she's always been this way. She comes back around by the fourth book.
- The Von Trope Family: The von Beaverpelt family owns the sawmill that employs most of Shady Hollow and are easily the richest animals in town. Though it turns out that Reginald's wife Edith was the one with family money rather than himself.
- World of Funny Animals: The cast are all anthropomorphized animals, there's no indication of humans anywhere in the world.
