Reader Reviews from Amazon.com:
A New Leash on Death 
The story begins. "A New Leash on Death" kicks off the dog lovers answer to "The Cat Who . . ." series by Lilian Jackson Braun. Susan Conant does equal justice to her story lines with Holly Winter & her two malamute doggie detectives, Rowdy & Kimi. I was hooked before I was half way through this book. No doubt - I will continue to read this series & search for the newest additions as they are made available in the marketplace. Hooray for Susan Conant!
Ambivilent 
This is the first in the series and it has some good aspects to it, but only if you are truly a dog lover. I mean even enjoying watching the dog shows. The book is not the best mystery and often reads like a dog manual. It lets you in on the background of dog shows, obedience classes and animal behavior. It also, unfortunately, has a tendency to be preachy about the care of dogs. Well this is like preaching to the choir. If you love dogs and read this book you know it and if you do not like dogs this book will have absolutely no appeal. As it is I am undecided about reading more of the series because while I enjoy dogs, I prefer the real ones (of which I have 8) to this rather textbook style of mystery.
Too much dog show / dog training terminology.... 
Prolonged discourse after prolonged discourse about dog shows regulations & expectations, AKC recognition rulings, and dog obedience fundamentals. I read every word since the book was selected by my mystery reading group. It was the general consensus of the reading group however that if the first book in Conant's dog mystery series was reflective of the books that follow that we didn't wish to read another of the dog series anytime soon. The most interesting part of the book I found was revisiting the time shortly after World War II, at the end of an Antarctic expedition, a commander of a U. S. Navy vessel who was supposed to transport the malamutes back to the U.S. chose to put them on a huge floating piece of ice and set a time bomb. This destroyed most of the foundation stock of the malamutes. In 1947, there were only approximately thirty surviving Alaskan malamutes registered with the AKC. Researching several web sites does in fact substantiate Conant's background history of this happening to the Alaskan malamute breed.
one of the best books in the series
if not the best. Ms. Conant stays on topic without the rambling that characterizes her later books. Her descriptions of dogs are spot on. Her descriptions of people are true and unstereotyped. She's written a nice mystery with a workable if not too surprising plot. The gem in this is the obedience club setting, the dogs and the main characters, the dog loving Holly, Kevin the burly cop, Rita, her psychologist tenant, and the whole Cambridge dog training club. Conant writes about dogs and dog people with freshness and telling familiarity. You will see your own dogs in hers, and enjoy the book all the more for it.
I think an auspicious beginning to a dog lovers' series. 
I really enjoy "The Cat Who" series as well as "Sneaky Pie Brown", but as much as I enjoy cats, I love dogs far more. Dogs have always been a part of my life, so I could hardly wait to begin this series. This first book did not disappoint. Ms. Conant knows the dog world, and she writes a pretty good story too. In this book Holly sets out to find out who strangled a fellow dog club member at one of their Thursday night training sessions at the old armouries. I like Holly Winter too. And her Rowdy is a gem. Anyway, I look forward to reading of their adventures in subsequent books.
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