Book excerpt: When starving artist Lia Anderson stumbles on a dead diva, it's no walk in the dog park. Talented, charismatic Dr. Geoffrey Lawrence has manipulated students and staff at Hopewell Music Conservatory for years, destroying lives and careers at whim. No one knows this better than Hannah Kleemeyer, the school admin who plays nanny for the professor’s trio of adorable dogs and is witness to the school’s secrets. Lia’s mural commission at Hopewell and her friendship with Hannah place her at the center of the drama when the Machiavellian voice professor is murdered, drama heightened by the theatrical tendencies of the suspects and further complicated by the terms of the professor’s will. The solution to Lawrence’s murder lies with his many victims, but the detectives assigned to the case are more suited to rousting gang-bangers than eliciting shameful secrets. Meanwhile, a mysterious informant is determined to involve Lia’s beau, Detective Peter Dourson. It’s a case Peter can’t touch now that Cincinnati has created a centralized unit to handle homicides. With Peter hamstrung by departmental politics and the assigned detectives barking up the wrong tree, it will take Lia and her dog park friends to unravel the truth. (75,000 words)