Iris Oakley loves working with big cats at the Finley Memorial Zoo in Vancouver, Washington, but lately things have not been going her way. For starters, the lions seem to have killed her husband, Rick Douglas. An experienced zookeeper, he wouldn’t have fallen in the moat at the lion enclosure that night if he hadn’t been blind drunk. Alcohol, and plenty of it, had been the bane of their on-again, off-again marriage, and now, thanks to alcohol, the marriage was off—forever. Still, Iris is understandably shaken, and maybe that’s why she almost got mauled herself: she must have forgotten to close the door on old Rajah the Bengal tiger before going out into the cat’s exercise yard. As a result, the foreman, Mr. Wallace, is on her case and has transferred her to working with birds under the graying, taciturn Calvin Lorenz. Birds, of all things!

Still, something doesn’t quite add up. Why would Rick get drunk on the very same night that he had promised Iris he’d stay on the wagon, only hours after the two had celebrated a new intimacy by getting back together? Could someone else have opened the door to the tiger’s cage after Iris had closed it and gone into the yard?

If so, then who? Night Kill is a fine Agatha Christie-style whodunit, with a large cast of quirky suspects, a sense of gentle foreboding, and, as befits a zoo story, lots of red herrings. Iris’s character is nuanced, sharp, and resourceful, like any good heroine, but believably vulnerable and insecure as well. The narrative—thanks to the author’s own experience as a zookeeper—ably describes the daily lives of keepers, the operations of small zoos, and the behavior of captive animals. You turn the last page having learned about a part of the world you might never have encountered otherwise. If a mystery’s a good read—and this is—you leave eager for a sequel; since this is Littlewood’s first novel, we can only urge her not to make it her last.