It's Got Dogs in it - and That's About the Only Good Thing I can Say
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Author: Spencer Quinn
Title: Thereby Hangs a Tail Genre: mystery Of Dog On It (the first "Chet and Bernie mystery" by Spencer Quinn) I said, "It's not great; the mystery is pretty mundane, but Chet's chatter carries it off... at least this time." I had no idea I was a prophet. Upon publication of Quinn's second "Chet and Bernie mystery" (Thereby Hangs a Tail), it became clear that Chet's chatter could not hope to carry the load through a second book. Thereby hangs the tale of a two-star mystery. Hired as bodyguards for Princess, a championship show poodle, the Little Detective Agency crew screws things up - as usual. Refusing to take the job because it seems "silly," Bernie heads for home. Later that day Princess and her mistress, the Countess Adelina di Borghese, are kidnapped. Suddenly Bernie decides to take the case after all. Upon following a vague clue ("The kidnappers were in a green pickup") to a ghost town outside Phoenix, Bernie and the ever -present (though not -vigilant) Chet stumble over a greater mystery: the abandoned yellow VW Beetle that belongs to Bernie's nemesis and part-time girlfriend, Suzie Sanchez. That's just before Bernie gets conked on the head and Chet dashes into the desert, only to make a grisly discovery. Problem being that Chet not only can't communicate the discovery to Bernie, he also decides to skedaddle deep into the desert at just the wrong time. Bernie's The Man, though, and he and Chet make quite a team. Combine that with Suzie's habit of carrying around grade A treats, and the two will stop at nothing to find Suzie; even if it is Princess Bernie's supposed to be searching for... Quinn's second novel, unfortunately, is pretty much a carbon-copy of the first. Chet finds the critical clue while fleeing from the bad guys (which, of course, he can't identify) but then disappears into the desert for a couple of days before being rescued in grand deus ex machina manner - a jet flying bombing runs in this case. Besides this regrettable similarity in plots, Thereby Hangs a Tail shares other features with the fist novel in the series, Dog on It: Chet suffers from what is clearly a monumental case of DADD (Dog Attention-Deficit Disorder) that, if anything, is even worse than in the previous novel. As narrator of the tale, Chet's habit of digression wears thin quickly. I cannot even guess at the number of times that Chet offhandedly "mentions" that he was suddenly someplace he wasn't supposed to be in that sort of "how'd that happen?" manner. Once or twice is cute; several dozen times becomes tiresome. Thereby Hangs a Tail is, according to its subtitle, a mystery. It's not a good one, however: the plotting is sloppy, and clues are either inserted like lead balloons or glossed over completely. Chet's inability to understand Bernie's thought processes provide Quinn far too many opportunities to insert logical holes and visits from the Coincidence Fairy. Where the initial installment in the series showed promise, the second installment demonstrates negative growth. Give this one a pass. As an aside, Quinn (who lives in New England) seems to have set the novel in the plateau country of the Four Corners region, several hundred miles from Phoenix. It's bothersome that the landscape is mesas and buttes instead of the Basin and Range country that surrounds Phoenix. The cover illustrator missed the boat, too... all content copyright © 2001-present by scmrak
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