I love a good plot and sub-plot and this book delivered. And who can resist the canine partners. I’ll certainly be watching for more from this author.

Jasmine Ramsey enjoyed her volunteer work with search and rescue dogs; she was an experienced handler and trainer, and often helped others in refining the training for their dogs. She was working with Luther, a cadaver dog in training, one evening in a building under renovation, hoping he would find the tooth she had hidden on the third floor. Instead, Luther found a dead woman, dressed in black with goth-style hair and makeup, and Jazz was horrified to see that the woman was a former student at St. Catherine’s, where Jazz worked as the administrative assistant.

Florentine Allen had changed considerably from the way Jazz remembered her, and she became obsessed with the case, determined to find out everything she could about Florie and why she had been killed in a deserted building. To add to her dismay, the police officer in charge of the investigation is her former boyfriend, Nick, and Jazz’s personal investigation throws her into contact with Nick over and over again.

This was an intriguing mystery, and I liked Jazz’s strength and courage in finding justice for Florie, even though she, as she admitted, was being nosy. Her curiosity led her into some strange situations and uncomfortable conversations, but that made for interesting reading. This is the first book in a series, and I’ll be on the lookout for Jazz’s subsequent adventures.

Jazz Ramsey trains cadaver dogs, and while working with a new dog, Luther; Luther stumbles upon a body. Jazz will be as tenacious as the dogs she trains to figure this mystery out.

The Scent of Murder by Kylie Morgan is a complicated book. The plot has the works of an interesting murder mystery tale. However, there was a bit of the book that the writer barely touched up on. The dogs trained to find dead bodies. The whole focus was on the the trainer and her ex solving the case. This cast of characters were not as set in stone like they should be. Their parts in this plot were crazy at times. The mystery part was done right. It was missing the emotional thrill part of what I was expecting this story to have. In that section, it fell flat to me. Mystery, mayhem, and intrigue was there. Overall, the book was good but it could have been better.

The Scent of Murder is the first in a new series about Jazz Ramsey, a volunteer cadaver dog handler. Working with Luther, a cadaver dog in training, Jazz is shocked to stumble across a body in the abandoned building they’re using as a practice ground - and doubly so when she realizes she knows the victim.

There’s a lot going on in Jazz’s personal life which makes her unwilling to walk away from this crime without getting some answers. In the last couple of years, she broke up with the man she thought might be the love of her life (who just happens to be the lead detective on the case and as attractive as ever), lost her hero firefighter father in a tragic accident, and lost her beloved dog to illness. She’s looking for answers for a lot of things, and finding them for Florie might, just maybe, help Jazz find some closure for herself, too.

There’s a lot to like about Jazz; she’s a very relatable, well-drawn character. The kind I could see myself sitting down with to set the world to rights over a bottle of wine or two. Her relationship with Nick, the detective, will ring true with every modern woman who’s found that juggling a busy schedule and a boyfriend who works strange hours sometimes means relationships just don’t work no matter how much you want them to. I could wish Luther appeared more in the story; not even being Jazz’s dog meant he had a much smaller part than I expected, especially with this being marketed as a cozy mystery. It just doesn’t quite fit into that category; cozies for me have more humour, and definitely more animal action. It’s more of a romantic suspense without a lot of romance, or even just a straight mystery series. Billing it as a cozy feels a bit disingenuous, and like many other reviewers, I felt slightly let down although I did enjoy the story.

I do think the story needed a bit more editing. There were some weird head-hopping POV moments, like the bit where we’re suddenly in minor character Khari’s head for all of one paragraph when he’s thinking about how he knows his girlfriend Tanya isn’t serious flirting with Nick. Jazz’s mother Claire is apparently 52, although Jazz is 36 and has two older brothers. Someone’s math doesn’t add up and a good editor should have picked that up. There are moments of unnecessary info-dump - Jazz is talking to her firefighter friend Matt about her feelings on having found a body, and ‘suddenly’ realizes that of course he’s seen a body too since he found a friend who suicided. At which point I blinked a lot - Matt’s a FIREFIGHTER. He’s seen a lot more bodies than just that. Again, something which should have been picked up in editing.

Despite these issues, I thoroughly enjoyed the story, even though it wasn’t quite what I expected, and I’d definitely read more in the series to find out how Jazz and Nick progress with their tentative steps towards a new relationship, and how Jazz gets on with the new puppy she gets at the end of the story - and hopefully more Luther!

Four stars for a solid start to a series I think could get a lot better with time.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review through NetGalley.

When I saw the darker looking cover of this book, I wasn't really sure if I'd end up liking it, but I knew that I liked other books by this author, so I figured why not. I'm very glad I gave it a chance and didn't judge this book by its cover--which is well-done, but doesn't come off as cozy. The mystery wasn't dark at all and was even a little funny in some places. It was interesting to learn about cadaver dogs and how they're trained to track. I enjoyed these main characters a lot. They were strong and likable. Jazz was strong too and not only in her personality-- and the fact that she'd had two older brothers to contend with at home came in very handy in her showdown with the killer.

I hadn't guessed the killer until the clues started coming, and it made total sense. I'm glad that Jazz softened just a little toward Nick. He brought her the sweetest surprise at the end. I definitely want to read the next book!

I voluntarily read and reviewed this book provided by the publisher via NetGalley, and my opinions are my own.

"Scent of Murder" is the 1st in a new series starring volunteer cadaver dog trainer Jazz Ramsey in Cleveland, where she is administrative assistant at an all-girls school.

After a friend asks Jazz to work with his cadaver dog, she takes Luther for training to an abandoned building. There, they discover the corpse of a young woman in Goth gear, whom Jazz recognizes as a talented past student at her school.

I enjoyed the cadaver dog focus as well as the leads in this new series, and look forward to more.

This is the type of book I’d like to call “luke warm” in that it never really gets that super exciting “oh my god” feeling to it.

The premise of the book is fantastic- Jazz is a cadaver dog trainer, and heartbroken from losing her own pup takes on a friends to train(Luther). During their session, things get a little crazy and in comes Nick- the sexy, I still want you ex boyfriend. With Nicks entrance, Luther pretty much takes his exit, and it’s really quite sad. There’s a scene where Luther’s dad has to take an emergency leave, and leaves him with Jazz- but you don’t see or hear from him again until his dad comes to pick him up. I feel like if the dog is on the cover, he should play a much larger role.

I felt very underwhelmed with The Scent if Murder. I had high hopes, but there weren’t any “aha” moments. Everything was pretty predictable and a little bland.

Maybe my standards are too high, but I crave those books that really get your heart pumping, and having you biting your nails waiting to see what happened. But at the end of the day, this book was just too predictive.


I gave this book 3 stars because there are minimal errors, and the writing as a whole is done very well, the story just doesn’t do it for me.

Too much fluff and reads like a young adult novel.

Jazz Ramsey has recently lost her tracking dog Manny and has agreed to help with the training of a new cadaver dog. Knowing that a building would be available she sets off for a night of training when what Luther, the new pup, finds is more than the tooth that Jazz had planted.

Turns out that Jazz knows the woman. Florentine “Florie” Allen had graduated a few years before from the private school where Jazz works. Currently, Florie is a struggling art student and though people change, Florie looks nothing like the girl Jazz remembers.

This is where author Kylie Logan begins to through everything that she can into the story. Arguments with old classmates, costumes, upcoming festivals, blackmail, personal relationships. But the sad thing is, the final “gotcha” was no surprise. Early on it made sense what Florie was up to since it is a well-used plot line.

There is also a romance if the redundant narrative doesn’t suit you, but that too is tired and clumsy at best.

This book was good up until I found out who the killer was. The dialogue was good, the story was good. I liked the characters. The subplot of training scent dogs was fantastic. But the killer left something to be desired. That being said I'm still going to read book 2 - I think Logan has created a very readable, likeable series. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Thank you to St Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This wasn't exactly the story I was expecting. I was looking for more of a story revolving around dog training and there wasn't enough of that to satisfy me. This book felt like reading a Nancy Drew story to me, felt a little tame and not enough heart pounding danger. It was an okay story but it just left me needing more.

Murder mystery involving a complex young woman from a disturbed background. Good characters and interesting story.

The Scent of Murder
By Kylie Logan
Minotaur Books
May 2019

Review by Cynthia Chow

Jasmine Ramsay works as the administrative assistant for St. Catherine’s high school principal Sister Eileen Flannery, but what truly gives Jazz joy in life is volunteering as a cadaver dog trainer and handler. It’s during a training exercise in a vacant Cleveland Flats building that her newest human-remains-detection trainee Luther succeeds a little too well, finding not the tooth Jazz planted as bait, but the actual corpse of a young woman. Jazz is dismayed that the victim was a former student of St. Catherine, but what truly breaks her heart is being forced to again interact with Detective Nick Kolesov. Once happily in love, their relationship ended not due to any dramatic betrayal, but because of conflicting schedules and priorities that slowly forced them apart.

Jazz becomes drawn into looking how the victim Florie Allan, once a popular and talented photography student, lost her college scholarship and transformed into a Goth girl. As Jazz learns more about Florie, her family, and her broken friendships, it soon becomes apparent that the stigma of coming from the poor side of town may have made Florie desperate for money and willing to do almost anything to escape her former life. Jazz’s honesty helps her to coax out information from reluctant young adults, and she is aided by her hilarious art teaching best friend and the extremely savvy and wry Sister Eileen.

What is truly outstanding in this first of a series by the prolific, best-selling author is the development of a unique, extremely sympathetic heroine. Jazz mourns the loss of both her adored dog and her father, a heroic firefighter captain who died on the job rescuing a family. Jazz revisits the site of the fatal fire regularly, and clues sprinkled throughout may indicate that perhaps there was more to the incident than first thought. Nick has a lot of work to do to break down the emotional shields Jazz has built around herself, as they both know that however well they always seem to get along, nothing seems to have changed enough to fix what originally broke them apart. Hopefully future installments will contain more details of Jazz’s training sessions with her cadaver dogs, as scenes of her working with the German Shepherd she babysits are fascinating. Jazz’s relationships with her supportive brothers are similarly entertaining, especially in light of how they are the firefighters she always wanted to be. Jazz gave up her dream to appease her mother, but Jazz has found a rewarding life training the dogs whom she finds much more comforting than humans. This smoothly paced novel slowly unravels the puzzles that are both Florie and Jazz, building the foundation for the start of a smart and compelling mystery series.

A wonderful debut to the Jazz Ramsey Mysteries that kept me glued to the book from beginning to end and turning the pages as fast as I could to see what was going to happen. I felt a connection with Jazz, an administrative assistant at an all girls school who loves training cadaver dogs.

This is a must-read for anyone who enjoys well-crafted must-solve mysteries with interesting characters, twists and turns. I can't wait to see what happens next with Jazz and the folks in Cleveland. I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving my honest review.

Brought to you by OBS Reviewer Jeanie

This is a very enjoyable first in a new series about Jazz Ramsey, her work with special-trained dogs, and work to find the murderer of a promising young student who left her school a couple years earlier. Jazz and Florie, the young woman she found murdered, are excellent characters who this reader could appreciate. The mystery is challenging, with a couple perfect red herrings and enough suspects to keep anyone busy.

Jazz Ramsey is a three-dimensional character who is easy to empathize with. Her father, a fire chief, her best friend, her hero, died about a year ago in an arson fire. She has worked as an administrative assistant for Sister Eileen at St. Catherine’s, a girls’ school in Cleveland, and enjoys what she does. In addition, in the tradition of her father, she is a handler for special dogs. This includes Manny, the dog of her heart she lost to lymphoma the same week her father died. She has not had another dog yet, but trains others. In this series debut we meet Luther, who she has been training as a human remains detection dog.

Jazz took Luther out one evening to an old building that was being renovated into condos to do some additional training. She had tucked the training aid inside the building earlier, and now waits for Luther to find it. Unfortunately, he finds a body that had nothing to do with the training aid. Then Jazz recognizes who it is, despite the bizarre clothing and makeup. Florie had been a scholarship student at St. Catherine’s, a promising young artist who had a scholarship at North Coast School of Photography and Design. Florie looked very different from the young woman she knew; she was dressed and made up in goth style.

Jazz’ ex-boyfriend Nick is the homicide detective on the case. Thankfully she only has to see him briefly as the building supervisor could vouch for what time she had the building key from him. Nick had actually asked whether there had been any evidence at the scene she might have removed before the police arrived! Nick (and his boss) knew how loyal Jazz was to St. Catherine’s and its students, so the question had to be asked.

Jazz wanted to know what happened to the lovely young woman with the promising career as a photographer and began to ask questions. She learned more than she wanted to know in some ways, not enough in others. As she searched, every bit as intent as she would be when training cadaver dogs, she found where Florie worked. Where she lived. The students and teachers who knew her, and the dark side of how Florie was able to get money to meet her rent. It was a labyrinthine path, putting Jazz herself in harm’s way.

In the meantime, life continued around her. Jazz’ mother has a surprise announcement, as does one of her brothers, Owen. Nick wants to know if they can start dating again, slowly, and see if they can work through what didn’t go well before.

The characters are well defined with background information and through realistic conversations and activities. I like Jazz and came to understand how important Florie became to her. Jazz’ family, Florie’s parents, and the people we meet at St. Catherine’s become almost real people as we see a fuller picture of Florie’s life. The primary characters are easy to be invested in and look forward to seeing them in the future.

The plot is intricately woven around historical neighborhoods, very likable people, and a compelling mystery. It drew me in at the beginning and kept my attention throughout. While I would have liked to see more work with the special working dogs, I think the perfect groundwork is laid for the future of Jazz and her commitment to them. While I did have an idea who the real killer was, the full motive was a surprise. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who appreciates a well-written challenging mystery with appealing characters.

*OBS would like to thank the publisher for supplying a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review*

The Scent of Murder is the first book in the Jazz Ramsey series by Kylie Logan. Our heroine is Jazz Ramsey whose job is to train cadaver dogs, but on the side she solves murders. Even though this is book 1, sometimes I had the feeling that I was missing things and there was another book where everything was explained. Jazz has a lot of things going on in her life, like seeing her ex once again, the deaths of her father and her dog and trying to solve the murder of a person she knew.

Each book in the series will probably center around a case with Jazz finding the killer and I hope that we will see more of the dogs. Luther was underused in this story and I hope he will be more active in the upcoming books. One of the main reasons I picked this book up is the dog on the cover and the story. Since the series will have the same main character for as long as it goes, we don't get many closures, just on the murder case. I liked the identity of the killer and I think that it might come as a surprise to some.


Overall, the book had some good and some bad moments that balance each other. It was interesting enough to keep me reading which is a plus. In my opinion, the story hasn't found its footing yet, but I have faith in the second book. I will read it to see if some things have improved, like the time the dogs have. I am not sure if I would recommend it or not and I will withhold my recommendation until I finish the second book, which doesn't have a publication date yet.

I have not previously read Kylie so I had no idea until putting this review together that she writes cozy mystery and this is her first foray into a harder type of mystery. It explains a lot. I’m not overly impressed with this one. I liked the plot idea of the story and felt she did a lot of character development of Jazz, but not much of Nick. Maybe that will happen in subsequent books. However if you are looking for cozy mystery this isn’t it. But it also isn’t a suspense mystery either. It’s not dark enough.

Jazz is a cadaver dog trainer and operator. She got into it from her Dad and has recently lost her own dog and is just doing training when we pick her up in this story. We get a good development of her relationship with her dead father and with her brothers too. They are all a close family and it makes for some unexpected visits and some heartwarming scenes.

She is an administrator at a local catholic school and that is how she ends up knowing the victim in this particular case. As she discovers the dead girl’s life, there were a few relationships I found interesting and worth exploring, but unfortunately for me it didn’t take long for me to figure out who the mostly likely suspect was. That made it frustrating because I really wanted it to change from my first suspicions and she didn’t switch it up even when she could have explored the most contentious relationship between the victim and a classmate.

If you are looking for romance, this one doesn’t fit that bill either. It gives us early stages of romance she starts to rekindle with the detective she used to date, but you don’t really get far in it. This one is set up for future books in the Jazzy Mystery series, but I don’t think I’ll be picking up future ones. I may try one of her cozy mysteries, I just feel this one wasn’t far enough into a suspense mystery for it to work for me. Also, I like to be entertained or surprised by mysteries and I really wasn’t either of those in this one. For that reason, I’m giving it a 3.5 of 5.

First in a series, this book does very well. Very informative and detail oriented. The writing style is pleasant and the concept behind it is very intriguing.

Jazz is an administrator at a catholic school and on her down time she trains cadaver dogs (that’s what really interested me, I LOVE dogs). One night while training she comes across a body of a girl she knew and from the point she made it her mission to find out why she was murdered. She goes from person to person asking questions that cops would ask. One of them actually being her ex boyfriend on the case.

The relationship between the two isn’t explored very much so if you don’t like romance in your books, this is probably a winner.

The only thing I had a problem with is the fact that she went out investigating and EVERYONE seemed to be so forthcoming with information. Jazz hadn’t seen Florie in years but it’s like it hits her so personally, or maybe she’s just nosey, that it’s a need now for her to know what happened. The book is straight forward and easy to read but it didn’t give me all the tingles I wanted. However I still enjoyed it and will give it 4 stars

3.5 stars. A solid cozy mystery, but I was disappointed by the dog angle. I was hoping for something like A Borrowing of Bones or The Lovely and the Lost, but the dog pieces here didn't click for me. The dog doesn't belong to the protagonist, so the connection wasn't really there in the story itself. I enjoyed the scenes with Jazz's family - her brothers, her mom. I might have connected more with the book if there were more scenes with those folks to help develop Jazz more fully.

If you enjoy amateur sleuths/cozy mysteries, this is a solid choice. But if you are looking for a great dog story, try one of the other books I mentioned - or an Andy Carpenter mystery - for a better dog fix.

I really wanted to like this book, it's based in my hometown and has dogs. I just had a hard time with the fact that an admin at a school/dog trainer was investigating a murder and the police didn't have any issues with it. It would have made more sense if Jazz was a private investigator. Despite this, it was still a good book and I really wish the dogs were in it more!

This review is based on an ARC from NetGalley, courtesy of the publisher. All opinions are my own.