Melinda Langston owns a pet boutique in exclusive Laguna Beach. A former beauty queen, she appears to see no issue in selling designer coats, pet beds, sunglasses and tiaras worth tens of thousand of dollars to pet owners. At the start of the story Mel, a cousin of Caro from the previous book in the series (Desperate Housedogs), is attending a charity ball in aid of abandoned pets. She causes a fracas and another pet owner accuses her of spreading fleas via her shop.

Mona Michaels, also attending, is outwardly wealthy and fond of put-downs, flaunting her beautiful Afghan Hound Fluffy. When Mel finds Fluffy loose in her shop, she goes to Mona's home - a mansion in a gated community - and finds the door unlocked and Mona dead. As happens in earlier books in the series, Detective Malone turns up and bawls out Mel for stealing an item from the house.

Suspects for Mona's murder include: an abandoned daughter who has kept the relationship secret, a drunken, gambling ex-husband who owes money to the mob, a pet psychic who has no real motive but argues with everyone, and so-called friends of Mona who were having flings with her loser ex or would have dropped her if they'd known she was bankrupt.

GET FLUFFY is a readable mystery that will keep Afghan Hound owners well entertained. The real star of the book was the aristocratic Fluffy, well contrasted with Mel's waddling drooling English bulldog Missy. Not only has Mel taken Fluffy home temporarily, she begins to teach Fluffy how to be a real dog, including letting her play in the dog-park where she can run up to 38mph with two Salukis to race, and teaches her not to get her own way all the time.

I had a few issues with the story. I felt that too much was left unexplained - why was Fluffy left loose when she was so valuable and her owner had a chauffeur? Why is Mel named guardian to Fluffy when it's acknowledged that she and Mona didn't get along? Since Fluffy wore a real diamond collar and had her own millions, why didn't Mona use that money? The authors, experienced mystery writers Anita Carter and Mary Lee Woods, seemed to be trying to cram too much into this tale. While they give us better animal focus than in the first book, I found some of the characters one dimensional and that a subplot involving the theft of a brooch was unnecessary .

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