Murder Mutts Mystery Books in Order

The Murder Mutts books shift M Ruth Myers' private eye storytelling to 1950s Cheyenne, Wyoming, and hand the lead to Heebs Kelly. Readers of the Maggie Sullivan books will remember him first as a scrappy Dayton newsboy. By the time this series starts, he is a young World War II veteran with detective skills, a dry sense of humor, and a small white dog named Chaucer who refuses to stay out of the action.

Heebs may sound breezy, but the cases are serious.

In A Penny Earned, he arrives in Cheyenne expecting to work with an Army buddy and instead finds him murdered at his desk. The police are happy to settle on an easy explanation, but the dead man's family want his name cleared. That setup tells you a lot about the series. Heebs keeps getting pulled into cases where the official story is too neat, the local powers would prefer quiet, and a few extra questions can get a man beaten up or killed.

The setting matters here too. This is postwar Wyoming, not a generic small-town backdrop. Cheyenne feels half western, half mid-century boomtown, with veterans coming home, old money and local influence still strong, and respectable facades hiding more rot than people want to admit. Heebs does not quite fit the place at first, which is part of the appeal. He is tough enough to survive, but he also looks sideways at what locals take for granted.

The second book, As Pretty Does, pushes the series into a more glamorous corner of the same world. A modeling school run by the Sinclair family looks polished and prosperous from the outside. Then the mother dies under suspicious circumstances, a second girl is killed, and the case turns into a maze of family loyalties, class performance, and dangerous secrets. Chaucer adds charm, but he never turns the books into pet cozies. The dog is company, comic relief, and sometimes a surprisingly good excuse for Heebs to be where he should not be.

One of the nicest things about this series is the balance of tone. Heebs carries some of Maggie Sullivan's training with him, especially her habit of paying attention to people others dismiss. At the same time, he is his own kind of investigator, younger, more easygoing on the surface, and marked by the war, including the loss of a hand. The result is a set of mysteries that feel classic and human at once. If you like mid-century crime fiction with smart observations, strong sense of place, and a detective who can trade punches, follow a lead, and go home to a dog, this is a very good corner of Myers' work.