Dog Treat

You know going in that Spencer Quinn’s mystery novel, Dog On It aims to please. There’s the punning title; there’s the title’s goofy typeface; there’s the cover illo featuring (you soon learn when you check out the blurb) the story’s protagonist and narrator, the dog Chet.

So does it please? Oh, absolutely! Or, to be fair, if you are the sort of dull, crabby, ice-hearted Squidward Scrooge who wouldn’t think a mystery told by a dog is funny, you’ve had plenty of warning that Dog On It is not a treatise on Kierkegaard. If by some chance you had distractedly picked up the volume, you’ve already dropped it and fled.

As for the rest of us. Well, your pleasure in Dog On It depends on whether you sign on for the trip. You’ll know in a page or two whether you want to play this writer’s game; An Arizonian private eye has a pet police dog who is also, more or less, his partner and who — though unable to speak to humans except by barks, growls and tail wags — speaks to the reader, telling the story of how Bernie, the P.I., gets to the bottom of a missing person case. Me, I signed on and enjoyed the ride. It was as fun as reading a kid’s “chapter book” when you were a kid. You just keep turning the pages.

The mystery is okay,  the suspense pretty suspenseful (and relieved a lot by the knowledge that “Spencer Quinn is working on his next Chet and Bernie mystery.” i.e. Dog and human survive the alarming circumstances Quinn puts them in.), but what kept this simple soul zipping along was the author’s resolutely maintaining the canine perspective.

Here are some passages I highlighted.

Watching Bernie dine with (Chet fervently hopes) his new girlfriend, Suzie:

“They clinked glasses. I loved that, clinking glasses, the sight and the sound, but mostly how no glass got broken. How did they do it? My adventures with glass never turned out that way.”

Here are some more:

“She wrung her hands. Hands are the weirdest things about humans, and the best: you can find out just about everything you need to know by watching them.”

“The woman looked confused; the confused human face is almost as ugly as the angry one.”

“The Hound of the Baskervilles was on the screen. I’d seen it more times than I could count—which was two in my case: me and Bernie, for example—but the way that hound’s howl kept scaring the pants off all those people never got old. If I could only howl like that…Hey! maybe I could.”

Here are the two Doggisms that sum up the Chet’s perspective:

“The truth was that humans didn’t turn out to be the best judges of other humans. We, meaning me and my kind, were much better.”

…and…

“Things have a way of turning out for the best: That’s my core belief.”

And they do. Very little violence — even the baddest baddies only receive flesh wounds, and a bite or two. The scatology you can expect in a tale told by a dog is no more than necessary to establish Chet’s point of view.

Good dog!

Dog on It
A Chet and Bernie Mystery
by Spencer Quinn
(Atria Books, Hardcover, 305pp.)

Magical Mystery Bookstore

We had no great expectations as we journeyed in search of The Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles. Past experience with specialized bookstores had taught us to look for no more than a hole in the wall with thin inventory and a staff anesthetized with boredom. But this Westwood Village shop dedicated to crime novels surprised us like a Jeffrey Deaver plot twist.

The Mystery Bookstore is spacious enough for that all-important browsing activity: wandering around stupidly. But it is also full of little secret nooks and crannies for that other equally important browsing activity: stupidly flipping pages. The inventory, wonderful to dictu, is actually more comprehensive than a ::shudder:: big-box bookstore because the proprietors wisely mix new and used books together, counting on their customers’ intimate knowledge of the order of the alphabet to sort things out. As for the staff, far from benumbed they rival Holmes himself in acuity, and in kindness they surpass Mother Teresa.

Many — too many — prettily jacketed novels called to us, especially a spanking new copy of Dog On It by Spencer Quinn — autographed, too! –  but we were mindful of our pocketbook. We payed honor to frugality by purchasing only, at least for the moment, a contemporary reprint of a 1949 pulp actioner  — Plunder of the Sun by David Dodge, brought to us by hard-boiled publisher Hard Case Crime — and an old, old copy of Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers with an elegant Christmas inscription from 1914! We hope Aunt May enjoyed receiving her gift from Metta as much as we enjoyed taking possession of it nearly a century later.

But the Dog calls us to return…

The Mystery Book Store
1036 Broxton Ave # C
Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 209-0415

Dog on It
A Chet and Bernie Mystery
by Spencer Quinn
(Atria Books, Hardcover, 305pp.)

Plunder of the Sun
by David Dodge
(Hard Crime Case, Mass Market Paperback, 222pp.)

You can read my review of Seven Keys to Baldpate by scrolling a few posts north, or, if you prefer, by clicking on the words WHAT SORT OF NAME IS “DERR”?

The Best Movie of 2009

We sort of wanted to end this solar circuit with a ten best list or two. But 2008 stands alone as the only year in history without ten best things in any category. Six at most. Worse, the ever-popular Ten Best Movies list proved impossible to compile because 2008 saw the release of not even the minimum of two good movies needed to make a list.

So, we must skip ahead to 2009, which has already given us the Best Movie of the Year:

The Best Movie of 2009 is Hotel for Dogs. The title refers to an animal refuge and is not, as you might have thought, yet another disparaging Islamic term for the United States. Hotel for Dogs will be available to the hoi polloi no sooner than January 16th. As one of those polloi, I haven’t been allowed in to any advance screenings, but I still declare it Best Movie of 2009 because I have faith in Thor.

That is, Thor Freudenthal, the Germanic director. Faith also in the leads, Emma Robert and Jake Austin, who, in their capacity as professional actors, pretend to be a couple of kids who rescue stray dogs and house them in an abandoned hotel. In the picture above, the white dog under the toe of the photographer’s right bicycle shoe is a rough-coated Jack Russell Terrier named Friday. The Beauceron under the left toe answers to the name Henry.

It’s sort of a shame 2009 peaked so earlier. The prospect of eleven months of inferior movies following Hotel for Dogs chills the heart. True, we can always fill our idle hours with the Joy of Reading, but the Best Book (adult fiction category) of 2009, Dog On It: a Chet and Bernie Mystery, by Spencer Quinn, will come out in February. That still leaves ten months of undistinguished entertainment. No escapism to ease our impending slide into barbarism. Maybe as society crumbles throughout the year and a new Dark Ages settles in and people reorganize their embattled lives around tribal leaders, there will arise a new breed of itinerant entertainer, wandering from armed camp to armed camp, bringing news in the form of rhymes, riddles and songs; bringing dance, juggling, acrobatics, much-needed merriment, and perhaps a little barter on the side. Maybe we will soon be offering you a list of the Ten Best Troubabours of 2009.

Dog on It, A Chet and Bernie Mystery By Spencer Quinn
(Atria Books, Hardcover, 305pp.)

HAPPY LAST DAY OF 2008!