The Deadly Dog Show
by Jerold Last
The Deadly Dog Show(Roger and Suzanne South American Mystery Series Book 6)
Cozy Mystery
Self Published
Print Length: 252 pages
Publisher: Amazon (July 19, 2013)
Synopsis
The sixth book in the popular Roger and Suzanne mystery series finds Roger and Bruce hired to go undercover impersonating the owner and handler of a Champion German Shorthaired Pointer named Juliet to investigate certain irregularities that might be occurring at dog shows in California. To complicate this case the bodies of dead judges start popping up and Suzanne picks up a mysterious stalker sending her most unwelcome gifts. Throw in drug cartels and corrupt cops and it sounds like a typical job for our detective couple.
The Deadly Dog Show can be read as a stand-alone novel.About This Author
The author is a Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of California’s Medical School at Davis, near Sacramento in Northern California. Jerry writes mystery stories that follow the cozy conventions of no graphic sex and no cussing but feature tougher protagonists and darker worlds than most cozies. Jerry knows the real world of dog shows from his own experience and that of his wife, Elaine, who breeds and shows prize-winning German Shorthair Pointer dogs. The cover photo is the author’s own dog Jolie (Grand Champion V. D. Nacht’s Classic Beaujolais, SH). Elaine provided technical advice for The Deadly Dog Show and editing for all of his books.
Author Links
Blog: http://www.rogerandsuzannemysteries.blogspot.comFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/RogerAndSuzanneMysteries
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Jerold-A.-Last/e/B0028EKOIY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1
Twitter: @Jerold Last
Purchase Link
Amazon
Guest Post:
A FEW PEARLS OF DOGGY WISDOM
My novel being promoted today is
“The Deadly Dog Show”, a suspenseful whodunit mystery set in the
hypercompetitive world of canine conformation contests, a world my wife and I
are very familiar with. In fact, the cover
photo for “The Deadly Dog Show” shows our own Jolie (aka Grand Champion Von Der
Nacht’s Grand Cru Beaujolais) at a large local dog show here in Northern California
several years ago at the height of her career as a show dog. The novel adheres to the “cozy” conventions
of no cussing and no gratuitous or explicit sex. There is some violence and a darker world
than you might expect to find in many typical cozy mysteries.
As I sit at
my desk about 25 feet away from nine six-week-old puppies (Thank you, Jolie), it
seems natural to reflect on our family's relationship to dogs. My wife Elaine has been breeding German
Shorthaired Pointers (GSPs) for a long time, most of her adult life. Her first GSP was the loveable, but not
particularly well coordinated, Jake (aka Lufkin’s Jaunty Jake as registered
with the American Kennel Club). Jake was
influential in getting us together, as described later in this post. Jake also sired Fliegen, who began a
12-generation long lineage that established Elaine as a well-known breeder of
successful GSP show dogs here in the western United States. For today, we will discuss the possibility
that Jake might have influenced the purchase of the real Pearl and the
development of the fictitious Pearl in the Spenser series of mystery novels
written by one of my favorite authors, Robert B. Parker.
In a land
long ago and far away (I always wanted to use that cliche from Star Wars in
writing, somewhere), Elaine lived in the Boston suburbs. She walked Jake in many places, including the
Boston Commons. A few of those times
Robert B. Parker, who lived and taught in Boston, came by The Boston Commons to
admire her dog and got to know Jake in all his lovable goofiness. Over his illustrious career as a mystery
writer, which started just about that time with The Godwulf Manuscript
(published in 1973, the year I moved to Cambridge), Parker owned several
generations of GSPs named Pearl, who occupied a lot of his book jacket photos
with him. In all of the Spenser books
that followed the first one, beginning, I believe, with book #2 in the series,
"God Save the Child", Spenser had a girlfriend Susan Silverman,
initially a school guidance counselor.
Susan morphed into a Ph.D. (from Harvard, no less) clinical psychologist
in book #10, "Valediction". Susan
eventually acquired a GSP named Pearl in, I think, the 19th book,
"Pastime". Her dog, whose name
was changed from "Vigilant Virgin" to Pearl on page 4 of Pastime,
looked a lot like Parker’s real Pearl, a solid liver-colored GSP (unlike Jake,
whose body was white with dark ticking and had a solid liver colored
head). Parker’s movie production
company, which made theatrical films and TV shows based upon his books, was
named “Pearl Productions”. Did Elaine
and Jake influence Parker’s subsequent choices of Pearl #1-3? I’d like to think so.
Our sons
grew up with a lot of Jake stories. When
I met Elaine she was living in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston,
and I was in the process of moving there.
Jake actually got us together the first time by losing a dog fight to a
Labrador retriever over who was going to retrieve the Labrador’s tennis ball
from the reflecting pond in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington
D.C. I was walking by (I lived there
then, Elaine and Jake were visiting) in time to offer a box of Kleenex to
staunch the flow of blood from Jake’s ear.
By the time we got to my car for the Kleenex the flow of blood had
ceased, I got to meet a cute young woman who fortuitously became the first
person I knew who lived in Cambridge, and we had a story to tell about how Jake
brought us together.
We lived in
an old house that had been broken up into apartments a few blocks away from
Harvard Yard. Every morning Jake was
taken for a walk to Harvard Yard where he could safely be let off-leash to run
around chasing squirrels and absorbing the culture. His morning ritual, from
which he never deviated, was to celebrate freedom as the leash was removed by
running as fast as he could to the statue of John Harvard, the founder of the
University several hundred years ago, that occupied Pride of Place in the
center of the broad Quad that was Harvard Yard.
The polite term for his next action was he “marked” the statue; for
those not in the know with respect to doggie behaviors, he urinated over John
Harvard’s legs and shoes. Every day for
several years! For the egalitarians
reading this, it’s OK to cheer at the symbolism.
In the
first paragraph I referred to Jake's lack of coordination. In a breed known for its grace and athletic
ability Jake was a super-klutz. The
problem of his innate klutziness was dramatized when we acquired his son
Fliegen at 7 weeks of age as our second GSP.
All of Jake's klutz genes were obviously recessive since Fliegen was
poetry in motion pretty much from the day he joined our family. Jake was the dog that would run on snow and
ice, get out of control, and skid into a tree.
One of his nicknames was "George of the Jungle", named for a
TV cartoon character whose theme song advised him to "Watch out for that
tree!" In the same situation (same
snow, same ice), Fliegen would do a graceful mid-course correction and slide
right past the tree. Another of Jake's
nicknames was "The Boston Bleeder" in celebration of the inevitable
outcome of the very few fights with other dogs he got into.
But for
lovability, loyalty, and willingness to protect Elaine no matter what, Jake is
still the standard we compare all of our other GSPs to.
