Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘To Fetch A Thief’

Beginnings

On Sundays we often do beginnings of a Peter Abrahams novel including those written under the Spencer Quinn byline. Here’s TO FETCH A THIEF, a Chet and Bernie novel in which Peanut the elephant plays a lumber-on role. (One of the great pleasures of that book tour was meeting the elephant keeper from a zoo who said, “You got Peanut right.”)

“I smell trouble,” Bernie said.

Better stop right there. Not that I doubt Bernie. The truth is I believe everything he says. And he has a nice big nose for a human. But what’s that saying? Not much.

It’s a fact that trouble has a smell – human trouble especially, sour and penetrating – but Bernie had never smelled trouble before, or if so he hadn’t mentioned it, and Bernie mentioned all kinds of things to me. We’re partners in the Little Detective Agency, me and Bernie, Bernie’s last name being Little. I’m Chet, pure and simple.

Congrats, Red Sox!

Now I need some sleep.

Baseball comes up a lot in the writing of Peter Abrahams (aka Spencer Quinn). Here’s a little something from TO FETCH A THIEF (3rd in the Chet and Bernie series but they can be read in any order! Don’t forget – Bernie pitched for Army):

Were we going anyplace special? I didn’t know, but I never turned down the chance for a walk. Soon we came to one of those places for throwing baseballs at milk bottles. We’d been to one before, me, Bernie, Suzie. The guy running it – tattoos all over his face, I never like that in a human – told us to get the hell out of there and never come back. By that time Bernie had won too many stuffed animals to carry, but why anyone would want even one was beyond me.

 

Beginnings (More)

On Sundays we’ve been doing beginnings – all the Peter Abrahams books in chronological order, including those written under the Spencer Quinn pen name. Here from 2011 – #25, TO FETCH A THIEF, third in the Chet and Bernie series. Chet faces a big challenge: how to come to terms with Peanut the elephant – a character he often thinks about in later stories.

[“Terrific. . . . Quinn radiates pure comedic genius via Chet’s doggy bright narrative. You don’t have to be a dog lover to enjoy this deliciously addictive series.”
– Publishers Weekly (starred review)]

“I smell trouble,” Bernie said.

Better stop right there. Not that I doubt Bernie. The truth is I believe everything he says. And he has a nice big nose for a human. But what’s that saying? Not much.

It’s a fact that trouble has a smell – human trouble especially, sour and penetrating – but Bernie had never smelled trouble before, or if so he hadn’t mentioned it, and Bernie mentioned all kinds of things to me. We’re partners in the Little Detective Agency, me and Bernie, Bernie’s last name being Little. I’m Chet, pure and simple.

Chetspeak on Sunday

(We’re doing beginnings. This is from TO FETCH A THIEF.)

“I smell trouble,” Bernie said.

Better stop right there. Not that I doubt Bernie. The truth is I believe everything he says. And he has a nice big nose for a human. But what’s that saying? Not much.

It’s a fact that trouble has a smell – human trouble especially, sour and penetrating – but Bernie had never smelled trouble before, or if so he hadn’t mentioned it, and Bernie mentioned all kinds of things to me. We’re partners in the Little Detective Agency, me and Bernie, Bernie’s last name being Little. I’m Chet, pure and simple.

I took a quick sniff, smelled no trouble whatsoever, just as I’d expected, but did smell lots of other stuff, including burgers cooking on a grill. I looked around: no grill in sight, and this wasn’t the time to go searching, although all at once I was a bit hungry, maybe even more than a bit. We were on the job, trailing some woman whose name I’d forgotten. She’d led us out of the Valley to a motel in a flea-bitten desert town. That was what Bernie called it – flea-bitten – but I felt no fleas at all, hadn’t been bothered by them in ages, not since I started on the drops. But the funny thing was, even though I didn’t have fleas, just the thought of them suddenly made me itchy. I started scratching, first behind my ear, soon along my side, then both at once, really digging in with my claws, faster and –