Death by the Dozen by D.B. Borton

Death By the Dozen

D.B. Borton 

Coming February 2026

There’s something inimitably cheery about a case in which both a kidnapped, pet pig and a set of gilded pigs with wings/urban art project feature heavily. It's delivered in a nice breezy, American-cosy style, with a main detective who is a grandmother. The dialogue feels very true to the age of most participants and the various careers and venues. There are many one liners related to pigs, inevitable references to pigs flying, and some "your mama" jokes for local Cincinnati color. And a hilarious parade of St. Patrick’s Day pigs! 

Just so you know, the first corpse hits the headlines quite a distance into the book. So don’t think you’re not getting your body’s worth in this cosy feeling mystery even though it takes a while to land.

While our main protagonist is a grandmother, there’s a slight resemblance to the Nancy Drew, archetype in her sleuthing technique, which is amplified when the teenager, Morgan, grandniece of the author ADA, joins in her sleuthing, and again when a secret in the old barn enters the picture. 

Then comes the possible mad woman in the attic, adding a literary overtone to the tale. It’s a bit of social commentary as well, because in the 1800s and early 1900s, women could be committed to insane asylum for reasons that had nothing to do with how mentally acute they were, and everything to do with whether they add inherited property that their husbands wanted to get control of. Or if they were being replaced with a younger model in an era in the reasons for divorce were limited. There is also a bit of a statement here about how easy it was for women to be erased from the historical record, by name changes on marriage and by death in childbirth, or simply by dying and being buried away from their home parish where people all their lives would have remembered them. Women as property, and as unremarkable property at that. Soon replaced, soon forgotten. Even when they were writers of children’s books and local news articles.

Another interesting piece of social commentary, not at all overdone, is how street people see their lived environment differently than the people who only come and go in it before heading off to homes and offices elsewhere.

Bits of Cincinnati’s economic and riverine history are embedded throughout the narrative, including excitement from river pirates going after the steamboats that were still a major source of transportation into the 20th century. Several of the suspects have roots in that history, making it a neat bit of authorly interweaving between factual and fictional events. Historical clues are equally important to solving the mystery as contemporary ones are.

Now the not so great: 
For one thing, there are a lot of characters to learn in the first couple chapters. And it’s sometimes hard to tell where characters are while they’re having their very interesting conversations, because the author doesn’t ground the reader in the setting, just mentions and moves along. The other quibble I have with this story is that it’s only mentioned briefly that it’s set in 1988, Cincinnati’s bicentennial year, the one time, at the very start. Periodic reminders throughout would have helped make sense of the ages of some of the participants, as characters who could remember the 1940s would still be youngish retired people in 1988, but would be very decrepit if not dead by the 2020s.

Overall a comfortable sleuthing mystery with interesting social historical commentary and some humourous pet shenanigans.

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