Up on the Woof Top by Spencer Quinn
What's It About?
Put this book in a Christmas stocking or under a tree and you will make someone very happy!If we awarded stars for excellence, Peter Abrahams writing as Spencer Quinn in Up on the Woof Top (Forge Books), his latest entry in the clever and always endearing Chet and Bernie series, would be showered with a giant box filled with glittering gold ones and gifted with a year’s supply of Slim Jims.
Fresh from the success of Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge (and when is that sequel coming out?), this canine and human pair of detectives have a tricky case in time for the holiday season. Chet the Dog, aka Chet the Jet, has his own Facebook page, blog and loads of tributes posted on the Chet and Bernie Fandom webpage. Bernie Little, the human private investigator, is a swell guy but how can one man match a handsome (mumble, mumble mixed breed, mostly German Shepherd) svelte and handsome black dog with one white ear who narrates their adventures?
Chet does not talk but has a rapidly running, stream-of-consciousness narrative in his head communicating the plot and action to the reader. Since it is told in dog language, the thread is often loose as Chet goes off on tangents. He doesn’t always follow nor convey the exact meaning of the humans speaking around him and has difficulty with numbers but you will get the drift fairly easily and be well entertained in the interim.
A Dynamic Duo
Chet and Bernie met under less than auspicious circumstances in 2009 when Dog on It debuted. Chet had just flunked his police dog academy obedience training. He recalls it had something to do with a cat and maybe a chase, whistles and signals ignored. However, Bernie thought he was just the right dog. They became partners and immediately began solving mysteries together.
Ultimately, a few books later, they opened the Little Detective Agency. Financially, times have been rough. Chet is a bit confused about drafty notes received from the bank. Just close the window, Bernie. It is up to human readers to discern Bernie is an overdraft away from bankruptcy until a promising case turns up.
Chet absolutely worships Bernie and spends a great deal of time waxing poetic about his human partner’s good points, including his fine features and how he would protect him to the death. They are sort of like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson since Chet relates the stories. He loves riding shotgun in a series of old Porsches, craves Slim Jims and positively drools over bacon strips and his favorite meal of steak tips.
Being unable to count past two, Chet can’t remember how many Porsches Bernie has owned but knows at least one went off a cliff and there have been some wrecks since they joined forces. Bernie does have a serious girlfriend, Weatherly, whom Chet likes almost as much as he likes her dog Trixie. He also has an ex-wife Leda, already remarried, and a son, Charlie, in elementary school.
A Holiday Disaster
Obviously, it’s holiday season in Up on the Woof Top with Chet and Bernie in Colorado on a puzzler of a case.
Dame Ariadne Carlisle, a wealthy, best-selling British author of 99 Christmas-themed mysteries featuring a character named Trudi Tremaine, is despondent because Rudy, her favorite Lapland reindeer, is missing. She has a publisher’s deadline to meet for book #100 but with unaccustomed writer’s block has not written a word.
She owns a big Colorado mountain spread called Kringle Ranch complete with elves, Santa and his long-time partner, and the full complement of reindeer with a plush sleigh to pull and homes with names taken from Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. It’s adjacent to a fabled ski resort and undoubtedly one of the jolliest places to celebrate Christmas.
Not long after Chet and Bernie are settled into Crachit House, the plot darkens upon discovering Ariadne’s personal assistant Chaz LeWitte at the bottom of Devil’s Gorge, a deep chasm. They facilitate a daring rescue but he is barely alive. This incident brings up memories of a cold-case murder that occurred decades earlier.
The Perfect Christmas Gift
No strangers to danger, the partners in the Little Detective Agency now need to find Rudy before Christmas Eve and solve two major crimes. The excitement, tension and merriment mounts. Along the way, they make friends and some new enemies, have a thrilling skiing adventure and help facilitate a Christmas miracle for a stressed-out deputy sheriff and mother of a handicapped child.
Will they find Rudy, solve the decades-old cold case murder and recent attempt on Chaz’s life and get off the mountain before a white-out blizzard closes the road? What do you think? Put this book in a Christmas stocking or under a tree and you will make someone very happy!
Up on the Woof Top is the fourteenth book about Chet the Dog and Bernie the Human but feel free to dive into any of these heart-warming mysteries as the sequence truly does not matter. It’s an ongoing love story between dog and man contained within well-written, solid mysteries with a theme and a riff on a literary title. Among other books in this sweet series are To Fetch a Thief, The Dog Who Knew Too Much, Scents and Sensibility and… you get the idea. It’s light, fun stuff guaranteed to lift one’s spirits. Hooray for Spencer Quinn!
About Spencer Quinn:
Spencer Quinn is the pen name for Peter Abrahams, the Edgar-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Chet and Bernie mystery series, as well as the #1 New York Times bestselling Bowser and Birdie series for middle-grade readers. He lives on Cape Cod with his wife Diana and with his dogs Pearl and Dottie.
