Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘Thereby Hangs A Tail’

Thereby Hangs A Tail Review – From Suspense Magazine

It’s a dog’s life in the desert with plenty of treats to eat, javelinas to chase, fellow pooches to befriend…and don’t forget murder. View the world through a dog’s eyes and watch him get excited about taking on a new case with the smartest human in the room. Spencer Quinn comes out with another winner with the second in the Chet and Bernie series.

Chet and his owner Bernie Little are hired to protect Adelina Borghese’s prizewinning pooch, Princess. After Chet steals Princess’ treat, they are summarily fired. However, soon after both Princess and her owner disappear. Then Bernie’s on-again off-again girlfriend, Suzie Sanchez, a reporter, also disappears after a desperate phone call. The trail leads to an old ghost town where Bernie is arrested and Chet is knocked out.

Chet gets separated from Bernie and begins his own adventure. Discovering first Adelina’s dead body, then finding Princess, he subsequently runs into two hippies who sell him to man bound to take Chet to Alaska. Who killed Adelina? Where is Suzie?

Where did Princess disappear to for the second time? How does a strange-
acting sheriff and his deputy in the next county tie into the case? Chet and Bernie track down the clues.

As with the first book in the series, the POV is first person, or rather, uh, dog. Quinn does an excellent job of unfolding the case while showing both Chet’s intelligence and his lack of knowledge in certain areas such as human language, memory on certain cases, and his inability to realize when he’s done something because it’s instinctual. Apparently, even though this is only the second book in the series, Chet and Bernie are veterans of investigative work with Chet remembering a lot of previous adventures. I
love the humor and Chet’s quirks. I so wanted to read the first book and when I had the chance to buy the second I took it. I will definitely be buying the third and fourth books in this series and hope there will be plenty more.

Reviewed by Stephen L. Brayton author of “Beta” for Suspense Magazine

Football: From Thereby Hangs A Tail

“Big football day,” says Spence. “Any predictions?”

“There’ll be lots of commercials,” Admin says. “Here’s a bit about football from Thereby Hangs A Tail.”

We’d done this kind of thing before, me and Bernie, sneaking up on a perp’s house in the night. Bernie always liked to do a little recon first, so I did, too. That meant crossing this crummy yard, all weeds and stone, getting out of the open real quick, then standing in the shadows at the back of the house, just listening.

Didn’t know what Bernie heard, but I heard TV voices, very faint, coming through the wall. I could even make out a few words, like “red zone blitz,” which meant football. We watched a lot of football at home. Bernie preferred college football to pro football, had once gotten into this big argument about it with a perp we had tied up in the back of a beer truck. Kind of strange, and maybe a story for some other time.

Welcome Russell.

The Nation Within

“This has come up a few times now,” Spence says, “where the phrase ‘the nation within the nation’ comes from.”

“Huh?” says Admin. “It comes from the Chet and Bernie series, end of story.”

“I’m sure we can find a nicer way to put it,” Spence says. “Here’s the first reference – from page 108 in Dog On It.”

A little later we entered the foothills and came to a town. The whole gang stopped outside a bar – I could tell it was a bar from the neon martini glass in the window, but also from the smell of human puke suddenly in the air – and everyone went in, everyone except me and the huge guy, my biker buddy. We kept going, around a corner and up a side street lined only by a few buildings, some boarded up. We stopped in front of the last one. My biker buddy got off and unhitched me.

“Cool ridin’, huh?” he said. “Come on, pooch, let’s go.”

I jumped down and followed him along a stone path and through a gate that led to the building; he closed the gate after me. Hey! I caught the scent of my guys, lots and lots of them. What kind of place –

The biker opened the door and we entered the building. We were in a small room with a counter, a woman behind it, and lots more smells, all from members of my nation. That was one of Bernie’s ideas – we were a nation inside of a nation.

“Hmm,” says Spence. “Doesn’t exactly say the nation within.”

“Nope,” says Admin. “The exact phrase occurs for the first time in Thereby Hangs A Tail, page 45.”

Nance looked down. Humans often had complicated relationships with each other. In our nation – the nation within a nation, as Bernie calls it – we can get pretty complicated, too, but we have ways of sorting things out much quicker. I was used to these awkward human moments, almost always found them interesting, even entertaining. I opened my mouth, unrolled my tongue, rolled it back in.

Adelina turned her attention to Princess. You’d be surprised how often humans use one of my guys to end their awkward moments, if Princess could be called one of my guys. “Does little Princess need some time to herself?” Adelina had two voices – a baby voice for Princess and the icicle voice for the rest of the world. I preferred the icicle voice. Now came more kisses. “Poor Princess, cooped up on the nasty plane.”

Cooped up? Princess would have had plenty of room in a mail box. I glanced at Bernie: his face was blank.