The Mystery Starts Here

I’m not a big fan of books written or narrated by animals. They’re usually beyond dumb, but when I read the blurb for “Dog on It” by Spencer Quinn, I decided to give it a try. The entire book is narrated by Chet the dog. His partner/master/owner is a private detective, Bernie Little. I chuckled and smiled for the first pages of the book. However, I had to quit before I got to page 100! Why? I almost vomited. By page 90, Chet had been, 1. stabbed so badly he had to go to the vet for stitches, 2. beaten around his head with a lamp while his master, Bernie did nothing, 3. tazed, thrown into a cage, left in the hot Arizona sun without water and tortured! Fun read, huh? I threw the book against the wall as hard as I could and went to kiss, hug and love up my dogs. I gave them each a big dog cookie, too!

The storyline was pretty simplistic. Lots for first-time writer boo-boos, like most of the character names were alliterative, the language was very simple, almost like it was written for children – yeah, except for that beating/stabbing/torturing the dog thing! I read the reviews on www.amazon.com and was AMAZED that most people loved this book! How can you love a book that talks about abusing an animal? I don’t get it.

Meanwhile, this is the first in a series about the dog and the detective. We never find out what kind of dog Chet is – he was supposedly trained as a K-9 dog but was either kicked or or retired or … something. The author never disclosed the reason – he was too busy being mean the the dog.

Okay, I’ll say it again – I HATED this book! Be warned, if you decide to read this garbage – Chet will be hurt repeatedly.

If you want to read a GOOD book with a dog in it, get a copy of “The Colors of Death” available at www.writewordsinc.com. I do not abuse dogs in my books.

“What We Remember” by Michael Thomas Ford has an interesting premise and is written in an interesting way. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me.

A Sheriff from a small town in New York is found dead, murdered. The book then takes various points of view both in the present and seven….or eight years ago when the man first went missing. Yeah, that’s one of the problems. Sometimes it was seven years – sometimes eight. Moving from the present to past, from character to character REALLY slowed the forward movement of the book.

Each of the man’s children, as well as his wife, COULD have killed the Sheriff and that’s why I kept reading. I had to find out who did it. I only managed to finish the book by skimming at least the last 50 pages. I had an idea who the killer was – and I was correct.

Beside the time-line that was off by a year – sometimes, I had a real problem with the ages of the adult children. One was married to the current Sheriff and he was…24! I’m sorry but I do not think there are many towns anywhere who want their chief law enforcement officer that young! I also hated the mother/wife. She was manipulative, mean and not a very nice woman! It’s darn hard to read about characters you hate.

There were a lot of lose threads that were never resolved and that bothered me – a lot. A great deal was made of the death of one woman, Rebecca, who was allegedly killed by an intruder with a shotgun blast to the face! It was such an obvious murder that I kept waiting for the author to tell us who killed her. He never did. Celeste the adult daughter was crazy in love with the town bad boy for most of the book, then turned around and married the man who would become Sheriff. Didn’t really make sense. There were several other cases but you get the point.

I’ve never read anything by this author before and probably won’t again based on this book. His writing was okay but not spectacular.

Look for my latest book, Call Sign: Love at www.writewordsinc.com