Seventeen of us met this week to discuss Dog On It by Spencer Quinn. This is the first book in the series featuring a canine narrator (Chet), who partners with his human (Bernie Little, P.I.) to solve crimes.
We have been meeting for 9½ years and until now we have avoided the whole talking cat and dog mystery genre, but the many positive reviews of this book prompted us to add it to our reading list.
From our discussion, it was clear that the book's appeal is not limited to just dog lovers, or animal lovers of any kind (with a few exceptions!). We all agreed that the author's ability to translate Chet's doggy thoughts and behavior was absolutely uncanny.
Most of us thoroughly enjoyed the book as a nice change of pace and found it to be a funny, quick read--an ideal beach book. Only a few book group members knew prior to the meeting that Spencer Quinn is the pseudonym of New York Times' best-selling author Peter Abrahams.
A few members thought the plot was the weakest part of the book. Involvement of the Russian mob seemed overdone. As adorable as most of us found Chet to be, a few members did not relish reading his thoughts for an entire book and thought his musings were repetitious ("Don't get me started on . . .") and -- for one cat lover at least -- insulting to cats. :) For the record, the majority of the group loved Chet's insights.
This book did not inspire the impassioned discussion that we have with more serious titles and social themes. However, the evening ended very nicely with members sharing anecdotes about some of the special dogs in their lives.
Book Rating: 3.8
Using our group's voting system on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best possible.
