Saturday, December 11, 2010

Book #71 - This Dog For Hire


Blurb: She gets top billing.  But he's the real teeth of the operation.  In the search for a killer, they make the perfect team....She's thirty-eight, too independent for most men's taste, and too suspicious for her own good.  In her back-alley Greenwich Village cottage, private investigator Rachel Alexander has one ace in the hole: Dash, the devoted, barrel-chested pit bull terrier she once saved from certain death, and who is now about to return the favor.
Dash and Rachel are looking for a missing barkless champion basenji named Magritte, and for a killer.  The basenji belonged to a struggling artist found dead on a downtown pier near a sign that said "don't be caught alone."  As Rachel pursues a string of clues that take her from the SoHo art scene to the world of Manhattan's homeless to the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, those words echo in her mind.  For in an urban landscape where good friends are hard to come by and true lovers even harder, Rachel soon discovers how dangerous it can be to trust the wrong person.  Unless, of course, that person is a dog... (from Goodreads)


Opening Sentence: "Greenwich Village is a place full of secrets, back cottages hidden from view behind wrought-iron gates and down long brick passageways and little Edens way up high, secret gardens growing not on the ground but on the roof, retreats concealed from the prying eyes of strangers."

Length: Medium - 293 pages

Notes:  Ok, so I didn't hate this book, but I definitely didn't love it.  I don't remember how it made my "to read" list, but I do know that I won't be reading any more in the series.  It's a murder mystery book, which usually I really enjoy, but this was missing the "I gotta keep reading" factor that I usually love about this kind of book.  And there is some pretty foul language, which I never like.  I never really felt connected to any of the characters.  I really thought the dog would make me love this - and fall in love with the dog - but I really felt like I never got to know the dog.  I think the only reason I got through this book so quickly is because I have so many other books sitting next to my bed, begging to be read!  Just an ok book, but definitely not one I'd recommend!

Random quote :"Dog training is a lot easier.  At least you know who the criminal is.  Okay, sometimes it's the dog, but usually it only seems as if it's the dog.  More often than not it's the owner, the so-called intelligent partner who thought it was cutesy-poo when little Killer growled for six months before he actually started putting his teeth into it."

Recommend: no

Have you read this book? Share your feelings!

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