THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019 // 19
BOOKMONGER
Politics goes to the dogs
THIS WEEK’S
BOOK
Please Don’t Feed the
Mayor
By Sue Pethick
Kensington Books
262 pp
$9.95
tion Day is only two weeks
away.
The townspeople ask her
to figure out how to run the
election legally, so Melanie
calls her ex-husband, a law-
yer, out of the blue to seek his
assistance.
Bryce MacDonald has
recently switched from work-
ing in the prosecutor’s office
to working for a Portland
law firm, and he is begin-
ning to hit the big time. He
has not spoken to Melanie in
years, but when she calls, he
experiences a pang of regret.
He agrees to help, even
though election law is not his
specialty.
But that’s not the only
blast from the past that visits
Bryce that day. He also learns
that one of the cold-blooded
murderers he had successfully
prosecuted two years earlier
has just escaped from the pen-
itentiary. At sentencing, that
man had vowed to hunt down
the prosecution team once he
got out of prison.
So Bryce decides that now
might be a good idea to get
out of town until the escapee
is recaptured. He shows up
on Melanie’s doorstep in Fos-
sett and offers to help with the
campaign.
Pethick juggles these ele-
ments — a town’s wacky
effort at revitalization, a rekin-
dled romance and a convict
running amok — with mixed
success.
The beginning of “Please
Don’t Feed the Mayor” is
tough sledding, but once the
story gets going, there is more
appeal.
The Bookmonger is Bar-
bara Lloyd McMichael,
who writes this weekly col-
umn focusing on the books,
authors and publishers of the
Pacific Northwest. Contact
her at bkmonger@nwlink.
com.
Kensington Books
The cover of Sue Pethick’s ‘Please Don’t Feed the Mayor.’
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Expires 4/1/19
Vancouver author Sue
Pethick continues her series
of lighthearted novels that tell
stories of human romance, all
made possible with the nudge
of a dog’s cold, wet nose. Her
latest book is called “Please
Don’t Feed the Mayor.”
The story takes place in a
small western Oregon town
that has been in the doldrums
since the downturn of the log-
ging industry. Melanie Mac-
Donald returned to Fossett
since her divorce four years
ago to live in the community
she grew up in, and to open
Ground Central, a coffee shop
which has become the infor-
mal community gathering
place.
At this point, her closest
companion is her border col-
lie, Shep.
The story begins when
Melanie wakes up from a bad
night’s sleep, and “the second
she opened her eyes a terrible
certainty clutched at her heart:
Fossett — the town she loved
best in all the world — was
dying.”
On the very first page of
this story, she vows to Shep
that “We’ve got to find a way
to save this place.”
It seems like a rather histri-
onic start, and Chapters One
and Two continue in this vein.
That same morning, Mel-
anie sees a schlocky report
on television about a cat in
England that has been elected
to a council, and she gets
the bright idea that her dog
should become Mayor of Fos-
sett in order to get publicity
for her town. She believes this
will bring in new residents
and new investments.
By the end of the second
chapter, she has convinced
the town to go along with
her gimmick to hold an elec-
tion that will put Shep into
the apparently newly created
office of mayor — and Elec-