[With a book named Mockingbird Court how could I not pick a line from the 1963 Inez and Charlie Foxx tune Mockingbird as the title for this review? The song made it to number 7 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart and was re-recorded a year later by Dusty Springfield. Aretha Franklin sang the song live on the TV show Shindig! in 1965 and then released her version in 1967. But the version I most remember was the duet by then husband and wife James Taylor and Carly Simon that came out in 1973, with Dr. John at the keyboard and Robbie Robertson on guitar. Here’s the YouTube video of the initial record by Inez and Charlie Foxx, as well as Dusty Springfield’s version, Aretha’s version (with Ray Johnson) and finally Taylor and Simon (with re-worked lyrics by James Taylor).]

WHAT I’VE BEEN UP TO

We’ve been hitting the gym and getting back into our workout routines, though this week the routine has been interrupted by a day trip down to Wisconsin for a doctor visit - nothing serious, just a routine annual checkup with a specialist. We are mostly lucky with the level of medical care available in our small town in northern Michigan, but there are a couple of specialties where we have to travel to get seen.

Anyway, on to this week’s book review —

If you’re not familiar with Shady Hollow, it’s the “woodland community” featured in the cozy mystery book series by Juneau Black. What makes Shady Hollow unique among the countryside / small town settings of most cozies are the residents. You see, Shady Hollow is populated by animals, or “creatures” in the parlance of the book series. Mockingbird Court is the sixth and meant to be the final cozy mystery set there.

Part fantasy, part murder mystery, this book series has so far been a charmer, with all of the books garnering mostly four-star reviews on Goodreads for example. I’m a bit surprised the authors (Juneau Black is a pen name for a pair of authors) haven’t signed a deal for a TV series yet, but then taking their concept from the page to the screen may be a bit difficult to pull off. I’ve read two of the prior five books, the original Shady Hollow and the last one published, Summer’s End, and enjoyed both of them.

In Mockingbird Court the action moves between the woodland community of Shady Hollow and the unnamed big city. When the book opens our hero Vera Vixen, a fox and reporter for Shady Hollow’s hometown newspaper, is on the ferry leaving the city, headed upriver and back home, where the annual Harvest Festival is about to kick off. Once back in the comfort of her own home, in front of a warm fire and about to settle down with a good book, there comes a knock at her door.

It’s Bradley Marvel, the wolf who is both a famous author and a boor. It seems his editor has been murdered in Marvel’s big city penthouse apartment in the building called Mockingbird Court, and Marvel has fled the city fearing he’ll be arrested for a murder he swears he didn’t commit. For some reason he’s bound and determined that Vera Vixen is the only one who can prove him innocent.

So far so good, but what comes next is different than the books that preceded it, and the fact that it’s meant to be the last installment may have something to do with that. We learn more about Vera’s personal life in this book, including her own relationship with the murdered editor. Turns out the two were once lovers, though the circumstances were closer to what we might call workplace harassment, as the editor took advantage of Vera, then a naive young reporter.

This set of circumstances allows for a story arc where Vera has to take stock of her life and decide what comes next, a worthwhile exercise for the final book. But it also lends a darker tone to the story, which is added to with further revelations about others in Vera’s early life in the big city as the book proceeds. It all seems a bit heavy for a cozy mystery full of woodland animals.

Also, the mystery at the heart of the book does not seem as well developed as it could be. The staging of the murderer’s “reveal” was well handled, but the identity of the murderer, while not a shocker, seemed to come a bit out of left field, with crucial facts about the motive not having been laid out (or hinted at) beforehand.

You won’t be surprised when I say that, upon finishing this book I felt that of the three Shady Hollow books I’ve read this is my least favorite. I think what most put me off was the dark tone that felt to me like an intrusion into this well-constructed fantasy landscape.

But having reflected on that, I think the authors had a reason for wanting to “pull back the curtain” so to speak. Cozy mysteries set in quant woodland settings have their place, they seem to be saying, but there is a real world out there, and for all its faults we need to get ourselves out in that world and get on with our lives. That is the lesson in this book for Vera Vixen, and for us. We’re just fortunate that Juneau Black has built this cozy little world that we can come back and dip our toes into from time to time.

RATING: Three Stars ⭐⭐⭐

RATING COMMENTS: A darker storyline than usual for the sixth and final installment of the much-loved Shady Hollow cozy mystery series.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I received an advanced reviewer’s copy of the book through NetGalley and the publisher Vintage. The book will be widely available on October 7th of this year.