Murder at the SPCA in ” No Kill Station”

As No Kill Station by Diane Meier opens, we see a woman approach Gary Randolph, the director of the SPCA in Rehoboth, Delaware and bash him in the head, killing him. As the local police arrive, Matt, a former Baltimore officer relocated to Rehoboth for his 12-year-old son, takes charge of the scene and gets himself assigned as local liaison to the state troopers. Discovering that the local community has divided into two rabid parties: pro-SPCA and anti-SPCA. It takes investigators time to locate the group fighting against the animal control agency because the leaders of the SPCA were known to make up excuses to impound the pets of those who criticized the group. But when they do, the concerns become really scary. The SPCA has been killing animals as quickly as it can despite laws specifying a time to hold animals in order for owners to claim them and not putting photographs of the animals online as ordered by the law. Further, the group has been directly killing all animals of mixed breeds and breeds known to potentially cause harm, such as pit bulls.

But as Matt investigates further, he discovers even scarier conditions. Many animals have been pushed to off-site locations where no one has a chance to see them, and the conditions in these locations are horrific. The dogs have not been fed nor cleaned up after for a long time, and two have such serious injuries they require immediate emergency attention. But what is most horrifying is the revelation by the underlings carying for the dogs though denied by the assistant director, now acting director, of the SPCA, that the dogs have been used as training dogs for dogs taught to fight each other. The trainer dogs are given the position of “punching bag” of the professional fighters, who are expected to destroy the training dogs until they die from the abuse. Now they wonder not who might have wanted to kill Randolph, but rather who might not have wanted to kill him!

This book has a very strong message about the importance of taking care of animals and giving all a chance to be adopted. In fact, the book seems to have been written with the specific purpose of urging an agenda. The characters don’t have a whole lot of depth to them, and the romance scene seems to exist in order to provide the obligatory romance in cozy mysteries. The message is very enlightening about the way each chapter of the SPCA is autonomous and has no oversight by a larger authority. Thus, the SPCA in one city may be as clean as can be, avoiding killing its animals, while the SPCA in its neighboring city could be doing nothing to avoid killing many animals and treating them badly.

Kevin Iggens performs the audiobook narration. He reads the book with confidence and making us anticipate what is about to happen. Despite not being one who makes an effort to make specific voices, Iggens still serves as a great story teller. I enjoyed his performance.

I enjoyed No Kill Station to some degree, but I just wish the book did not force the toy topic on us as much as it does. I did appreciate the appendix, which shares a bit more about the no- kill shelter movement. It states that Delaware now works hard to avoid killing animals and manages to keep from killing 90% of the animals that come through the shelter. I also appreciated that the author is giving the proceeds, if any, from this book to. continuing the work of no- kill shelters. But I wish the book had more depth to it. And the conclusion did not make it fully clear why the murderer chose to kill Randolph. I thus give this book two stars.

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