One good thing did come out of the Winter of our Disconnect. Blog Mom had to go get some books to read since we couldn't read blogs much. One of our favorite types of books are mysteries. Franklin and I prefer them if there's a dog involved. Well, Blog Mom came across a mystery series she'd never read at all and it happens to be narrated by one of the greatest dog detectives in the history of - well, of dog detectives. His name is Chet. You never see a whole picture of Chet, probably so he won't be mobbed by fans, I figure. Blog Mom says he's a Fictional Dog. I'm not really familiar with that breed, but I figure it must be one of those new hybrids. It's pretty clear from his description that he's got some GSD and probably some Border Collie in him and probably one or two other things. Maybe a little Sibe or some sort of terrier. He has stated that he enjoys digging quite well. Chet is a brilliant detective and a witty narrator and the plots are quite satisfying. We were chuckling and chortling and enjoying the first book so much that Alpha Mom ran out and got her own copy right away. She was not sorry.
What we love best about the books, though, is that Chet's essential canineness shines through at all times. He doesn't come across as just a human with fur and a great sense of smell. No, Chet is all dog. He thinks like a dog, has senses like a dog, marks everywhere, lives in the now and naps like a dog. His partner and human is Bernie Little, and together they are the Little Detective agency. Oh, I could go on and on, but if you haven't read these books you really need to get hold of one. You can thank us later. Might as well start with Dog On It, which is the first and go from there. Below is the most recent one. We don't have it yet. Blog Mom says she's trying to stretch things out a bit because we'll be a little sad when we run out, which will be soon.
The only bad thing is that there are only three of the books so far. They're written by a Mr. Spencer Quinn. You'd think it was amazing that someone who'd written only three books could write them so well - even the very first one, but here's the thing of that - Mr. Spencer Quinn is also Mr. Peter Abrahams who was already a highly trained author. Not so surprising, really. After all, I wasn't always Lola and I learned a lot when I was...whoever I used to be. Don't really recall all that much about it now. Franklin, as we know, was Brooklyn when he got here. A lot of you were called something else at one time, too. I suppose there's no reason why this might not happen among humans, too.
Chet has a blog of his own which is called Chet The Dog, although he's sometimes forced to share it with someone called Admin and also on Sundays there's Ingrid. We haven't quite got all that straight yet, but all we really want is a place to keep tabs on Chet while Spence (I think that Spence is Mr. Quinn's call name.) is working on more books for us to read. One nice feature is that you can upload a photo of yourself and that's all you have to do to become a Friend of Chet. We kind of messed ours up the first time, so it was up there twice. I'm not sure if that's been fixed yet. Lots of nice dogs and also some humans can be found there. They are also quite generous with excerpts of the books while they're in progress, but so far we're not reading them, preferring to read the whole book at once. We might change our tune by the time number four gets written, though. Blog Mom says we'll be jonesing by then, whatever that means. It's worth a look, really.
