Books : A Dog About Town

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Author name: J.F. Englert

 : A Dog About Town
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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780440243632
ISBN number: 0440243637
Label: Dell
Manufacturer: Dell
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: May 29, 2007
Publishing house: Dell
Release Date: May 29, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 95724
Studio: Dell




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Product Description:
Harry is a man still mourning the loss of his beloved girlfriend, Imogen, who left him suddenly without a word. He’s also the owner of a plump, poetry-loving Lab, Randolph. Like most Manhattan dogs, Randolph spends his days sifting through a world of scents, his owner’s neuroses, and an overcrowded doggy run at the American Museum of Natural History. But now a bereft Harry has drifted into a circle of would-be occultists. Which might not be so bad if one of them wasn’t also a murderer.

But which one? With 100,000 times the smelling power of a human being, Randolph can quickly detect the scents of guilt, anxiety, and avarice—and he has no lack of suspects, from a seductive con woman to an uncouth professor of the decorative arts. Now, to protect his hapless owner’s life, Randolph might have to do the unthinkable—and start training Harry to catch a killer….



Customer Reviews
User popularity level:  out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Great read!
If you love dogs and love mystery/suspense novels, this is a great book for you!



Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - I loved this book!
I very first learned about J.F. Englert's Bull Moose Dog Run Mysteries through LT's Early Reviewer program, where they were giving away the second book in the series, A Dog Among Diplomats, this past month. The premise of the series or at least of the very first book) is Harry's grey lab, Randolph, helps guide Harry to help solve a murder mystery. That's what it seemed to be at first, at least. I was immediately attracted to this book due to the fact that I have a grey lab of my own (her name is Mame) and I just thought the premise sounded cute, so I thought I'd give the very first one a try.

What I discovered was a surprisingly well written book. A great deal of the story deals with a secondary (yet primary in Harry and Randolph's eyes) mystery, the disappearance a year ago of Harry's girlfriend and Randolph's mistress, Imogen. It is apparent from the beginning of the book that Harry has taken Imogen's disappearance hard, and it is brought up numerous times how it has affected his day to day life, and these are the parts of the book that surprised me the most, Harry's feelings and how he is dealing with the grief of loss.

The entire book is told from the POV of Randolph, who lets you know right away that he is a most peculiar and special dog, that he is sentient. He can read, write (using Alpha-Bits), has long-term memory and is all-around quite the intelligent dog. Englert handles explaining things from the POV of Randolph extremely well, even giving some insight into doggie behavior.

The mystery portion of the book is well played out, even though most of it is explained as the book progresses, but it is Randolph's way of explaining it to Harry that is the most fun (I don't want to give too much of this away, but I've left a clue in this review!).

With lots of humour sprinkled about and the building, continued mystery of Imogen, I hope to see more books in Bull Moose Dog Run Mystery series. It's certainly not a challenging read, but it is well-written and just plain fun! I'm looking forward to A Dog Among Diplomats release at the end of the month.



Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - A canine conundrum!
Harry is a young man who lives in Manhattan with his Labrador retriever Randolph. After Harry's girlfriend Imogen disappears, Harry tries to communicate with her by attending a séance. On the day of the séance, Harry's neighbor, Lyell Overton Miskoff-Hardy, is found dead. With his fly open. Although it is determined that Overton died of natural causes, Harry's intelligent dog Randolph insists there was foul play. How he communicates this information to his master is the basis of Englert's mystery.

This is the kind of book I'd normally ignore as I "don't do mysteries", but, having had the author send me a signed copy of his book, how could I refuse? Okay. I'll admit that I liked it. The New York City nostalgia did me good. I also love animals and found the idea of a pet dog as a main character very appealing. In addition, I've never before read any book with a tree sloth as a character! What I didn't particularly like about this book, and probably most mysteries, is trying so hard to remember details but never getting the entire story until the end - when it all comes gushing forth. That kind of reading tempo is not for me. I felt a bit confused by the ending, but that in no way detracted from the rest of the story. I'd recommend this book for anyone who likes dogs and is looking for a light, fun read.



Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - Randolph ... Holmes? ... Poirot? ... Wimsey? ... or just whimsey?
First things very first ... let us all be absolutely clear that far and away the best thing about this book is the superb portrait of its hero on the cover. I suppose most people will see a Holmesian reference in that image but I choose to see a Wildean touch: perhaps "Lady Windermere's Dog" or "A Retriever of No Importance" or "The Importance of Being Fido," or even "The Picture of Doggie Grey."

The story behind the cover isn't bad, not great, but certainly not bad. It requires one gigantic leap of faith from its readers, but one not all that much greater than accepting a funny little Belgian detective with an egg-shaped head or a younger son of a duke with a peculiar penchant for solving crimes, or the innumerable crime-solving ladies of a certain age who run bookstores on the side, or candy stores, or laundromats or repair houses.

The author's wordsmithing abilities are perfectly competent if not especially memorable, leading some Amazon reviewers to use that ghastly phrase, "a fast read," or some variation of it, as a term of praise(!)

The plot is serviceable, if hardly convincing, although excessively insistent on the inevitable (and recently published) sequel.

All in all, I say "A Dog About Town" is well worth a few of your dollars and a couple of hours of your time.

Four stars.



Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - An original novel and a fun read
This is a fun and original novel that also happens to be very well written. (A pleasurable read that isn't a guilty one!)

The novel's originality lies in its very first person narrative, which is conducted by a sentient, well-read grey lab--with a penchant for Dante. Randolph's mistress, Imogen, went missing a year earlier, and Randolph (literally) sniffs out the guilt and emotions in potential suspects and prods Imogen's boyfriend, Harry, in the right direction to solve the case. (According to this novel, at least, a dog's sense of smell is 100,000 times superior to that of humans--I'd love to see Englert develop this scientific angle further in the subsequent books.)

The novel ends with a cliffhanger....but luckily for me, I only read this very first book a few weeks ago, and the second book in the series (A Dog Among Diplomats) will be out in a few days.

This book will appeal to mystery and animal lovers, as well as anyone who is just looking for a good novel to pick up that won't end up sitting unread on their night stand for weeks..

One of my favorite lines: "If Imogen's disappearance had taught me anything it was this: men need to be loved or they will slowly and invariably go bad. A perfectly adequate male in his twenties will become, in little more than a decade--if unloved--a strange creature statistically prone to die of an ingrown toenail in an apartment crammed with hoarded newspapers and unwashed cereal bowls."

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