"Dog on It," by Spencer Quinn, Atria Books, 305 pages, $25
Chet and Bernie are on the trail of a mystery. Fifteen-year-old honors student Madison Chambliss has disappeared.
Her distraught mother thinks she's been kidnapped. Her shifty father thinks she's run away to Las Vegas. Bernie Little, owner of the Little Detective Agency, has been hired to find her.
Bernie, a likable private investigator with bit of a cash-flow problem, doesn't work alone. His sidekick — and the book's narrator — is his dog, Chet, a K-9 school dropout with a talent for sniffing out clues and stray Cheerios.
Chet catches Madison's scent — "young human female, with hints of honey, cherry, and a kind of sun-colored flower I sometimes saw along roadsides" — and he and Bernie are off and running.
Chet rides shotgun in a beat-up old Porsche as he and Bernie travel the canyons and deserts of the Southwest looking for Madison. "Bernie was the idea man. I did the digging," Chet says.
Chet tells the story with a generous dose of doggy wit and wisdom ("Don't even get me started on the uselessness of the human nose," he says) and some keen observations on human behavior.
Chet knows the nuances of a human shrug, smile or nod of the head. And Chet also understands English, apparently, although idioms throw him for a loop. ("Red herring? That was new. The truth is, I'm not a seafood fan. I've had more than one bad experience with fish bones.")
Along the way, Chet tangles with a mountain lion and a gang of Russian thugs, gets lost in a mine and befriends a gang of bikers. Chet also performs a few Lassie-like feats of heroism to save his beloved Bernie, but it's his doggedness and determination that make him such a charming hero.
The missing-girl mystery itself is nothing special, but it doesn't have to be — it's Chet's unique voice and his relationship with Bernie that keep us turning the pages.
Chet, long on common sense and short on attention span, is an engaging protagonist who trots through life with pure doglike joy at the simple things: Slim Jims, the wind in his ears, a barking contest with his pal Iggy next door and watching "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on TV with Bernie.
"Dog on It" is billed as the first Chet and Bernie mystery. Here's hoping there are more adventures to come for the dauntless duo of detective and dog.
E-MAIL: jwilliamson@desnews.com