Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The author says it all in the closing acknowledgments: this is “a book about a pony who solves a murder.” Twenty-five years after 12-year-old Penelope Marcus rode into the woods with Frank Ross, the owner of High Rise Farms, newly revealed evidence suggests that she bashed him to death. She’s arrested, extradited from California to New York, and uprooted from both Laus, her estranged husband, and Tella, the daughter who struggles with mental health issues. After her arrest, we meet the beloved pony she had been riding on that fatal day, who’s gone by so many names over the years—Houdini, Sequoia, O—that the chapters presented from his point of view are wisely labeled “The Pony.” Whatever his name is, he’s resented Penny since the day in the past when, “out of the blue,” he believes, “she up and sold me.” He determines to seek Penny out. Conferring with a wide variety of animal companions from Circe the goat and Caya the hound dog to Fifi the sparrow and Cassandra the barn cat, the pony dodges the humans who block his path by treating him as property to be used and sold. He is finally reunited with Penny and solves the long-ago mystery—which, to be fair, isn’t that hard even for a pony. The story is consistently more absorbing when it focuses on the animal characters, perhaps because so many of its humans treat each other so inhumanely. The parallels it traces between the imprisonments of Penny and the pony are especially eye-opening. Ever wished for “Black Beauty, Private Eye”? Wish no longer. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.