Gabriella Herkert

Gabriella Herkert writes comic mysteries that place an inexperienced investigator inside cases shaped by animals, money, and complicated personal ties. Catnapped, published by Berkley in 2007, introduces legal investigator Sara Townley and opens the Animal Instinct Mystery sequence. Sara is assigned to locate a missing cat whose inheritance makes the disappearance unusually consequential. At the same time, she must reckon with a recent Las Vegas marriage to a Navy serviceman she hardly knows. The investigation links a wealthy pet, Seattle legal work, and a dangerous discovery, giving the novel both domestic comedy and a conventional puzzle structure. Herkert continued Sara's story in Doggone, released the following year as the second Animal Instinct Mystery. Publisher records identify Catnapped as a 336-page Berkley title, while bibliographic listings preserve the two-book order. The sequence shows Herkert building recurring fiction around Sara's developing investigative judgment, her unsettled relationship, and cases in which affection for animals intersects with human greed and deception.