Teaser Tuesdays: Santa Clawed

This week my teaser lines come from a book I read a few years ago -- Santa Clawed by Rita Mae Brown, part of her Mrs. Murphy mystery series. I've been looking for something with a Christmas theme, and realized I didn't remember "whodunnit" in this one, so I gave it a quick reread.

In case you're not familiar with the books, you need to know that Mrs. Murphy is a cat belonging to Mary Minor ("Harry") Haristeen, postmistress in the tiny village of Crozet, Virginia.  Harry has a talent for solving mysteries -- and a habit of getting herself involved in dangerous situations requiring the aid of Mrs. Murphy and Harry's other pets, Tucker (a Corgi) and Pewter (another pussycat). In this snippet, the critters have once again come to the rescue by attacking the villain:

"Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, let...go," Harry commanded....
Mrs. Murphy ripped out her claws. Pewter, knowing she had to as well, did, but not without the satisfaction of noticing some tiny bits of flesh dangling from them. (p.229)

Oooh, nice kitty! Guess you just can't take the jungle out of the cat.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.