I hadn't heard of this zoo-themed mystery series until a mention of this book by FeistyPom2Love in the Book Talk forum got my attention. I loved the title, and of course an "anteater" book would be perfect for the "Such an Animal" release challenge. I got this good-condition ex-library hardcover from Better World Books.

This turned out to be an entertaining - and very, very wacky - mystery, with lots of nuggets of information about real-life zookeeping challenges (most of them messy) and lots of not-so-realistic behavior by the eclectic characters. In a way it reminded me of Donna Andrews' "Meg Langslowe" series (see We'll Always Have Parrots, my favorite), for the extended-family weirdness and the love of animals, though the tone of each series is a bit different.

Here, zookeeper Teddy Bentley is the daughter of a hovering and wealthy-through-serial-marriage mother who keeps hoping to get Teddy to marry a rich man herself and come back into the "we're very rich" fold. But Teddy herself has very little, thanks to her father's decamping with ill-gotten gains long ago. (Apparently he offered her an offshore stealth account, but she doesn't want to fiddle with illegal money, and is probably wise to refrain.) Her current favorite critter is the pregnant giant anteater, Lucy, and when a dead man is found in Lucy's enclosure - complete with some clearly-anteater-inflicted claw-marks (anteaters don't care for intruders and can do some serious damage with those big claws) she gets involved in the case in an attempt to clear Lucy's name.

I enjoyed the animal-care scenes (especially the hilarious ones in which Teddy escorts zoo animals to a local TV show, nearly always resulting in catastrophe for the rather clueless host), and some of the wackier dialogue and plot-points were amusing, though I did find the situation of Teddy's family increasingly hard to believe. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I'd read more in the series.

[Here's an entertaining - and sometimes graphic - Cracked article about zoo-keeping, which reinforces many of the plot-points in the story.]

I left this book in the Little Free Library in the Roger Williams Park Zoo at around 1:30 or so; hope the finder enjoys it! [I'd hoped to get a photo of the book with the zoo's own giant anteater, but when I reached its enclosure I found it curled up asleep in its box, looking very comfortable - and occasionally waving itself with its huge furry tail - but not presenting much of a photo opportunity, so I used the nearby sign instead.]

*** Released as part of the 2015 You're Such an Animal release challenge. ***