A Dog About Town

This is a fun and original novel that also happens to be very well written. (A pleasurable read that isn't a guilty one!)The novel's originality lies in its first person narrative, which is conducted by a sentient, well-read black lab--with a penchant for Dante. Randolph's mistress, Imogen, went missing a year earlier, and Randolph (literally) sniffs out the guilt and emotions in potential...more

This is a fun and original novel that also happens to be very well written. (A pleasurable read that isn't a guilty one!)The novel's originality lies in its first person narrative, which is conducted by a sentient, well-read black lab--with a penchant for Dante. Randolph's mistress, Imogen, went missing a year earlier, and Randolph (literally) sniffs out the guilt and emotions in potential suspects and prods Imogen's boyfriend, Harry, in the right direction to solve the case. (According to this novel, at least, a dog's sense of smell is 100,000 times superior to that of humans--I'd love to see Englert develop this scientific angle further in the next books.)The novel ends with a cliffhanger....but luckily for me, I only read this first book a few weeks ago, and the second book in the series (A Dog Among Diplomats) will be out in a few days.This book will appeal to mystery and animal lovers, as well as anyone who is just looking for a good novel to pick up that won't end up sitting unread on their night stand for weeks..One of my favorite lines: "If Imogen's disappearance had taught me anything it was this: men need to be loved or they will slowly and invariably go bad. A perfectly adequate male in his twenties will become, in little more than a decade--if unloved--a strange creature statistically prone to die of an ingrown toenail in an apartment crammed with hoarded newspapers and unwashed cereal bowls."   hide