Murder unleashed

Unscrupulous bankers, abandoned homes, and a cold-blooded killer on the loose: Mags Rogers and her wire-haired dachshund, Baxter, dig up the dirt in this novel. Settling into ranch life outside Reno, Nevada, with her gregarious great-aunt Jeep Reed and Jeep's German Shepherd, King, former Wall Street trader Mags doesn't miss the cutthroat world of investment banking- because its destructive tentacles have reached westward to the Silver State. The foreclosure crisis has taken a huge bite out of the local real estate market, where rows of homes sit unsold and forsaken- but not empty. A group of squatters, including desperate single mothers with children, are living under the radar in the houses on Reno's Yolanda Street, without water or electricity. Big-hearted real estate broker Babs Gallagher enlists Jeep and Mags to start a community outreach program, but that means going up against uncaring utility companies, corrupt officials, ruthless politicians- and a merciless murderer. When a former banker is found brutally slain in one of the abandoned homes, the notion of "cutthroat business practices" takes on a whole new meaning.--From front book jacket flap.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.