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Doggone it! I wish I could say that Spencer Quinn's SCENTS AND SENSIBILITY is Top Dog, but all it warrants is a yap or two.
Dramatis personae: Bernie Little, divorced dad in the Phoenix area who started Little Detective Agency; Chet, his dog, and, incidentally, the narrator of the novel; Daniel and Edna Parsons, neighbors to Bernie, elderly and in frail health; Billy, the Parsons' toad of a son who is attempting to use his parents' blind love for him to embezzle their money; his slimy girlfriend, Dee; Special Investigator Ellie Newburg, who does not last long; Brick Mickles, a member of the police force whose actions are suspicious; a pair of fat smelly twins who have, in addition to brass knuckles, really bad attitudes; Clay Winners, who runs Cactus Sound, a front for a serious drug smuggling operation; Summer Ronich, daughter of rich parents whom Billie Parsons and an accomplice may have helped kidnap; Samuel and Marlene Ronich, owners of a bar who paid a half-million dollar ransom to the kidnappers; one-half million dollars: missing.
SCENTS AND SENSIBILITY is a guy story, plenty of big guns and Porches and motorcycles, testosterone-fueled rage and violence; lots of drugs, hefty stashes of cash. My statement here is intended to point up the stereotypes the novel seeks for readership, not the actual abilities of male novelists or male readers. But rather, the work seems as if it might have been written for a TV audience, or for a YA adventure lover. That should not be too surprising, because Peter Abrahams, for whom Spencer Quinn is a pen name, has written for TV, did grow up loving adventure fiction, and writes YA fiction. Maybe with a dog as a narrator subtlety is quite impossible.
Quinn's novel has a few moments—most of which happen when the canine first-person narrator tries to make sense of English idiom, such as when one of the thugs calls an object of his scorn a pussy and Chet immediately scents the air for the possibility of a good cat chase; or when someone comments that Bernie acts white, and Chet, who understands everything literally, is confused because Bernie is actually rather tanned in color. I think that Chet would have trouble reading this review if I said that, at the end, the bad guys get their hides tanned and all evildoers are unmasked. I don't feel the least bit embarrassed about using the vernacular, since all of Quinn's/Abrahams' dog stories, like this one, sport a silly title that puns on canine abilities and literary personalities.
C. Downs is professor of English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and a fan of the well-turned whodunit.
Reviewed by Cathy Downs, June 2015
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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