Got a Mystery on Your Hands? Call a Canine.

EverythingDogBlog #86: Curl up with a canine caper - or four!

Bark M for Murder, by J A Jance, Virginia Lanier, Chassie West, and Lee Charles Kelley (Harper Collins Publishing, 2006, 313 pages, $7.99 paperback)

A deal and about dogs, to boot.

What a title! Of course, with a title like that, I just had to read this book of canine mysteries. “What a deal,” I thought, being familiar with three of the four featured authors. “And, all about dogs!”

How lucky could I get, especially with Kelley and Jance, and I was looking forward to finally reading West in my genre.

Did they save the best for last?

Unlike the order of authors’ names on the cover (Jance, Lanier, West, Kelley which isn’t even alphabetical), the first story is by Lanier, then West, then Kelley, and finally Jance.

And the first short is short - 32 pages long, the second is 100, then 94 and, the final one is 87 pages. Quite bumpy but perhaps commonplace in collections of only four short stories.

Jance is a classic and my long-standing opinion is well backed up by the ‘reviews’ of Bark M on Amazon.com.

Rumor has it that West actually lives here in Columbia, Maryland, and works (or used to be a secretary) at the physics lab where I used to work: she is primarily a romance writer (so I have never read her before).

Kelley is a very excellent dog mystery writer if you can gloss over his dog training tips, which just don’t make sense to this dog trainer. His characters are genuine and likable.

And, new to me, is Lanier who, I just found out, has written the Bloodhound mystery series.

Reading in order, but, . . . .

I read these four selections in order and I do believe they saved the best for last: Jance. Of course, any story with golden retrievers is bound to be best.

Mysteries are hard to write short

It is hard to write a mystery in short story format - so many details and so very much action, that I do believe all mysteries should be fully developed into full-length books, with the possible exception of Jance’s work. There is simply too much action to be condensed, usually, too many cliff-hangers, too many twists and turns to be believable. Plus, we just don’t get to know the characters well enough.

Dogs should shine in dog books

I also believe dog stories should be mostly about dogs – not just mention the dog every few chapters or even have the dog in many scenes but only as a afterthought – dogs are too exciting and developed as characters to be wasted in the background.

For a good glimpse of the mysterious content of this collection, read the spoiler reviews on Amazon - what can I say but echo that Jance is at her best in this challenging genre.

These short stories, in short

In short, you will read about a gun-toting grandmother with goldens, a dog trainer training a poodle, bloodhounds doing bloodhound work and a sensitive GSD (German Shepherd Dog). Women are depicted in a major way, as three of the four leads. You will also read about a con man, amnesia – regular ingredients. And Maryland is a star!

All in all, a great little book for plane reading