It's a Wonderful Woof

I am so torn on this book. It was an impulse rental at the library, based solely on the festive cover and adorable dog thereon, so I had absolutely no idea what to expect. When I first began reading, I was initially shocked that the story was told from Chet's POV, since he's the dog from the cover, but I also became quickly enamoured with the concept. There's a certain charm to animal POV stories which appeals to me, and a mystery-solving dog especially hit the nostalgia center of my brain with thoughts of Wishbone - a childhood fave I still enjoy to this day.

That said, there isn't much similarity between how Wishbone - an exceptionally smart, highly humanized dog used to make learning fun - and Chet think. Chet is very much portrayed the way you'd expect for “how a dog thinks” - short attention span, less than stellar memory toward unimportant things, snap judgments on people, focus on smells, obsession with treats, occasionally barks without knowing why because the urge arose, marks territory, etc. Oh, and he absolutely does not understand human idioms, which leads to a few funny moments where he meanders in telling the story to focus on how he's concerned the people don't understand basic things or how he's reminded of something else entirely. Sometimes, this is entertaining and engaging. Sometimes, it's a bit repetitive. But I never quite grew bored of that aspect.

Which, unfortunately, is not to say I never grew bored of the book itself.

My main problem with this book is that it felt two or three times its length and Chet's narration style distracted so much from the (frankly mediocre) mystery that I just didn't care about it. Yet, paradoxically, my favourite part of this book is being in Chet's mind and seeing a take on how a private investigator's former K9 officer-in-training (I think he maybe failed training and was a rescue?) pet and investigative partner sees the world. Like I said: I'm torn on this one.

This is the twelfth book in a series - one of only four instalments my library offers - so I'm not surprised I didn't understand some aspects. I am, however, pleased to say that I never felt like I was missing out much. I may not know Bernie's alluded backstory, but I know he's a “genuine war hero” who might have survivor's guilt over an incident; and I may not know if Chet is allowed everywhere because it's a quirk of this universe or because he's maybe a service/support dog, but those are extraneous details. Everything else is more or less given enough exposition to be either blatant or easily inferred and the dynamic between Chet and Bernie is so well-written it's easy to settle into as a new reader. I do wonder whether some of the vaguely-mentioned past cases are just exposition or things from previous instalments, but otherwise everything works well enough.

However, the dynamic between Chet and Bernie and novelty of Chet's narrating POV aren't quite enough to keep this book rolling without some major stalls along the way. I hate to say that because I adore Chet, but it's very much true of my experience.

Aside from major pacing issues, the mystery also failed to engage me. Between plot beats, I often got so mixed up by Chet's limited perspective and rambling asides that I couldn't remember past clues or who some side characters were. If I'd cared about the mystery, perhaps I would have retained more details, but it had basically nothing to do with the holidays - the entire reason I chose this book - and involved a lot of uninteresting (to me) details about classic art, archaeology, and ancient architecture. These things were wrapped up in some weirdly convenient circumstances which felt less like successful investigation and more like luck. I was kind of hoping for a Christmas-themed mystery, but for a vast majority of this book anything holiday-themed is just mild window dressing and there's barely any sense of it being winter, let alone nearly Christmas, except for mentions of Santa, a few ventures into tree decorating, and some snow in the final 30% - or possibly only 20%, actually. By time things start to seem festive, so much of the book has passed that it feels more coincidental than thematic.

I also have a bone to pick - dog pun not intended - with the way the ‘romance' is handled. Namely: Weatherly is terrible to Bernie and though she does make amends her reasoning is absolutely ridiculous. Thankfully, the relationship barely features in maybe three or four chapters and is mostly in the background because Weatherly is having a tantrum and ghosting Bernie like a grade school child over him not divulging privileged client information to her, through roughly the first three-quarters of the story. But still, if readers are supposed to be happy for the existence and reconciliation of this relationship, then it completely missed the mark for me. I simply don't care for it.

In fact, I thought Bernie had more chemistry with at least three different characters than he did with his actual girlfriend. One of them was a man, and Bernie is presumably heterosexual, so that says how little chemistry I felt in the actual relationship.

The ending also went way off the rails in a manner that felt far more divorced from reality than the rest of the book's events... but I was honestly quite into it. I mean, there was finally a lot of action, a sense of being given clues to follow and seeing direct payoff, and that charmingly surreal feeling of a larger-than-life mystery. I was a childhood fan of Inspector Gadget and a teenage fan of Veronica Mars; I absolutely do not mind one iota when my private investigator protagonists perform wildly unrealistic feats to beat exaggeratedly evil villains in elaborate schemes which could never fly in the real world.

I'd go so far as to say the final third of this book turned it around for me. Instead of being occasionally bored into taking breaks to play video games - like I had been during the earlier portions of the book - I was glued to the pages, reading every moment I had a chance, devouring the remainder of this book with a curiosity for the ending and a smile for the lovable narrator that is Chet the dog.

I mean, what's not to love about fun narration like this:

???I beg your pardon???? said Katherine Cornwall.

Uh-oh. Begging was a complete no-no. No begging. Stop that begging. Don???t beg. You heard it all the time. Yet somehow???out of all possible people!???this no-nonsense woman didn???t know that. The case had taken a bad turn.

I???d come across animal crackers before???you see some bothersome stuff in this business???and had no interest in them, but Slim Jims are another matter. I looked at Bernie, not at all in a begging way, far from it, merely a very normal hey buddy what???s up how???s it goin??? kind of look.

???Now, Bernie,??? she said. ???Let???s not look a gift horse in the mouth.???

Stop right there. Did Johanna think Bernie wanted to look for gifts inside the mouths of horses? We know horses, me and Bernie, prima donnas each and every one.

adored

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
—
WHAT'S IT'S A WONDERFUL WOOF ABOUT?
Someone comes to the Little Detective Agency to hire them, but it's just not the kind of case that calls for Bernie's strengths, but he knows just the right guy for the job, Victor Klovsky. The two had recently run into each other on different cases, and Bernie's been reminded that Victor isn't cut out for the more, shall we say, physically demanding cases—but he's great at the stuff you can do behind a desk, which is what this case calls for.

Also, I think Bernie feels sorry for the guy and thinks he can do him a favor by sending work his way to make up for the way things went during that recent encounter.

You know what they say about roads and best intentions, though. It's not long before Victor has gone missing—a very concerned mother (who has less confidence in his abilities than Bernie does) hires Chet and Bernie to find him. It turns out that not only Victor is missing, but his client is, too.

There's nothing about this case that suggests a cushy desk job anymore—a strong sense of violence surrounds the disappearances—and other elements of the case as it develops. Can Chet and Bernie sniff out what happened to them, and what the relationship is between these disappearances, Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt, Caravaggio, and an old Spanish mission?

RELATIONSHIP ISSUES
This is news to no one that has read one book in this series, but Bernie's not good at relationships. Expressing himself to a woman he cares about is not a skill he possesses (I'm sure Chet would differ with me here, but I stand by it).

His current relationship is still pretty new—and seems to be going pretty well. But that's all stuff that happened since Tender is the Bite. It doesn't take him too long to mess things up with Weatherly. Both his reaction to this throughout the novel and the way it started felt different than the way he'd put his foot into it with Suzi (but not completely). The relationships between Bernie and the two women are notably different—which is a relief, too often in situations like this it feels like a duplicate of a previous romance.

A VERY BERNIE CHRISTMAS?
It would be very easy to forget that this is a Christmas/Holiday Themed novel—I did more than once, and I was expressly looking to see how Quinn dealt with it.

However, when the holidays do come up? It's great. There's a Hannukah scene that I just loved, and...well there are a couple of great other scenes about the holidays, but my no-spoiler policy stops me from getting into those.

LANGUAGE CHOICE
This isn't a big deal—I don't want to make a proverbial mountain out of anything. But it struck me that Bernie's language is a bit stronger than usual. I don't want to take the time and do word counts or anything—I'm lazy and I'm not going to buy e-copies just to document this point. This book is still PG-13, but it jumped out at me and struck me as different—and I'm curious about it.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT IT'S A WONDERFUL WOOF?
I had a blast with this—there was a time 5 or 6 books ago, that my interest in the series waned a bit—I still enjoyed the books, but they didn't grab me the way the initial novels did. That's gone, and I have to wonder what was wrong with me—Quinn and Chet are as fresh and entertaining now as they were in Dog Gone It.

There's heart, there's excitement, there's humor, there's the devotion that only a dog can have for their human, and you even can even learn a little bit about art history. Throw in a little holiday magic and you've got yourself another winner in this series.

Go read this—which readers of this series probably don't need me to say. But if you haven't read any before, this functions well enough as a jumping-on point, just be prepared to make some time for the previous 11 novels. You're going to want to read them all.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from Macmillan-Tor/Forge via NetGalley in exchange for this post—thanks to both for this.