This Dog for Hire

I liked "This Dog For Hire". It kept me entertained from beginning to end. It also kept refusing to be the easy-to-classify book I thought I'd bought.


I was expecting a cosy mystery with a sassy woman PI accompanied by a cute-but-muscular dog that saves the day. It sort of is that, but it mostly isn't.


Rachel Alexander is more spiky than sassy. She's a hard-bitten New Yorker who's too tough to intimidate or to bullshit. She's a thirty-eight-year-old, recently divorced woman who gave up her dog training business when she married and took up the PI business when she divorced, mostly because her family thought it was a terrible idea. Dash, her pitbull who she rescued (stole) as a puppy from punks who wanted to train him to fight, is cute show more but muscular but he's sidelined for most of the book.


The plot is clever, with a few unexpected but reasonable twists in it. Most of the action is set at the Westminster Kennel Club Show in Maddison Garden and it's clear that this is a world that Carol Lea Benjamin understands very well. Seen through Rachel Alexander's unforgiving and perceptive eyes, the fiercely competitive nature of the show and the idiosyncrasies of its participants are thrown into vivid relief.


The story is a lot darker and more emotionally intense than I'd expect a cozy mystery to be. This isn't a tidy middle-class white-picket-fence kind of tale. We're taken amongst New York's homeless and dying and we're shown the taken-for-granted gay-bashing. A childhood of abuse is a key plot element. It's revealed with skill and told with a compassionate honesty that makes it painful to read.


Once I scrubbed my pre-conceptions and took the book on its own terms, I found myself enjoying being in Rachel Alexander's often abrasive company, partly because the traumas she was dealing with were real and important and not just devices needed to enable neat plot twists.


"This Dog For Hire" came out in 1997 and is the first of nine books in the series, that last being published in 2006. I'm looking forward to reading the next one "The Dog Who Knew Too Much" when it comes out as an audiobook.


I listened to the audiobook version of "This Dog For Hire" which was released in November 2019. It's narrated by Dina Pearlman who is the perfect choice for this series. show less

This is a murder mystery with a very entertaining lady detective Rachel Alexander and her sidekick Pit Bull Dash (Dashiell). When she first lays eyes on the person who hires her to solve a murder, she describes him as ‘with a walk that announced his sexual orientation.’ The gay aspects of the book are done well for dramatic effect. The police are doing little to solve the murder as they are treating it as a gay bashing. The book was published in 1997 and I think at that time it was more of a dramatic statement instead of now where every movie and TV show is required to have at least one gay person represented.

At one point the gallery owner is hyping the work of the dead artist’s work in this way:

“It was his way of expressing not show more only his own alienation and the alienation all gay men feel, but a far larger issue, the alienation of the nineties, the understanding that we never really know each other, and the question of whether or not many of us care for each other.”

In addition to the murder, we are told that “Margritte is missing.” A basenji who is a valuable AKC champion. The author uses the tie from Margritte to bring in details of the Westminster dog show and use that venue with great effect. Margritte is nicely described in this paragraph:

He was immaculately clean, almost sparkling, a little foxy-faced boy with small rounded-at-the-top triangular ears and dark, alert eyes. He was a ruddy chestnut brown with white points on his face, chest, paws, and tail, a handsome, elegant, and with an uncanny presence, especially considering he weighed not much more than twenty pounds. He was clearly the kind of dog judges say “asks to win,” the kind of creature you somehow find yourself drawn to look at, no matter how many other dogs are around. It was no surprise at all that he was so successful in the show ring.

Dash has a good role in the book and is not overplayed with no anthropomorphism. Here is one passage I enjoyed:

“Does Dashiell actually… do things, I mean, besides protecting you?”
I looked down at my dog. The top of his head had been slimed by one of the other dogs. His big meaty mouth was agape and panting, a loop of drool draped delicately over his worm-colored lower lip. And he was covered in dirt.
“You thought he was just a pretty face?”

I am just bad at figuring out who the murderer is. I just go along with the story and enjoy it. It is all tied up very well in the end. I enjoyed the writing and it made me chuckle at times. The book to me was a quick read and I always looked forward to picking it back up. I would recommend the book but probably not vote it as the best mystery with a dog series, which I am still on the hunt for. show less

This is a murder mystery with a very entertaining lady detective Rachel Alexander and her sidekick Pit Bull Dash (Dashiell). When she first lays eyes on the person who hires her to solve a murder, she describes him as ‘with a walk that announced his sexual orientation.’ The gay aspects of the book are done well for dramatic effect. The police are doing little to solve the murder as they are treating it as a gay bashing. The book was published in 1997 and I think at that time it was more of a dramatic statement instead of now where every movie and TV show is required to have at least one gay person represented.

At one point the gallery owner is hyping the work of the dead artist’s work in this way:

“It was his way of expressing not show more only his own alienation and the alienation all gay men feel, but a far larger issue, the alienation of the nineties, the understanding that we never really know each other, and the question of whether or not many of us care for each other.”

In addition to the murder, we are told that “Margritte is missing.” A basenji who is a valuable AKC champion. The author uses the tie from Margritte to bring in details of the Westminster dog show and use that venue with great effect. Margritte is nicely described in this paragraph:

He was immaculately clean, almost sparkling, a little foxy-faced boy with small rounded-at-the-top triangular ears and dark, alert eyes. He was a ruddy chestnut brown with white points on his face, chest, paws, and tail, a handsome, elegant, and with an uncanny presence, especially considering he weighed not much more than twenty pounds. He was clearly the kind of dog judges say “asks to win,” the kind of creature you somehow find yourself drawn to look at, no matter how many other dogs are around. It was no surprise at all that he was so successful in the show ring.

Dash has a good role in the book and is not overplayed with no anthropomorphism. Here is one passage I enjoyed:

“Does Dashiell actually… do things, I mean, besides protecting you?”
I looked down at my dog. The top of his head had been slimed by one of the other dogs. His big meaty mouth was agape and panting, a loop of drool draped delicately over his worm-colored lower lip. And he was covered in dirt.
“You thought he was just a pretty face?”

I am just bad at figuring out who the murderer is. I just go along with the story and enjoy it. It is all tied up very well in the end. I enjoyed the writing and it made me chuckle at times. The book to me was a quick read and I always looked forward to picking it back up. I would recommend the book but probably not vote it as the best mystery with a dog series, which I am still on the hunt for. show less

This is a fairly good book in what appears to be a great series (I have not read any others in the series). Rachel runs a PI business along with her faithful rescue dog companion Dash. Dash has no special powers, but is a very well trained dog, who can assist and does assist Rachel whenever he can. Dash does uncover some important clues in this mystery and helps Rachel discover who has killed a new artist and owner of a show winning basenji breed dog as well as taken the dog. Although this can be read as a stand-alone book, I found that the author did not provide much back story about many of the characters or events, which made many actions and words as well as events alluded to confusing. In this book, Rachel and Dash solve a very show more complex and sometimes confusing murder mystery. The book is very well written, though the author does dwell on the intricacies of the Westminster and other dog shows a bit much, though much of this does not really add to the mysterious murder/dog-napping. I found these parts dragged and would have preferred a bit less and more of a summary. Yes, the shows are important events in the plot, but a lot of the intricacies could have been abbreviated or summarized rather than described in much detail. I thoroughly enjoyed the interactions between Dash and Rachel, and how well attuned they were to each other. Of course, since Rachel had been a dog trainer earlier in her life, I figured any reader, knowing this, would expect the fantastic dog training Dash had received. The story moved along easily and well. I did not get a good feel for many of the characters, though they were minor, in many cases, but that, I think, was because I had not encountered them before in other books and, as I said, there was little back story provided. This is a great book for a genuine dog lover, though anyone who enjoys a good mystery that includes a dog “PI” will enjoy it. I received this from Netgalley to read and review. show less

This was interesting and fun - nothing like P.I.s with animal partners! (not a talking dog, though!)

Feels a bit dated - written in 1997, but for some reason, I felt like it was set in the eighties. It was a strange feeling, indeed...

A little grittier than I normally read but still an enjoyable read. Plot is intelligent, characters are believable, and the dog acts like a dog (a very well-trained dog). I will definitely read more of her books.

Manhattan P.I. Rachel Alexander and her formidable canine partner, Dash, search for a witness to the murder of a New York artist--the victim's barkless dog. Finding the champion Basenji and solving this case will have Rachel and Dash checking out the Westminster Dog Show and the SoHo art world. Carol Lea Benjamin's debut mystery (she's also written nonfiction books about dog training) won the 1997 Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel; if you enjoy it, check out the next book in the series, The Dog Who Knew Too Much. Kirkus Reviews says This Dog for Hire is "highly satisfactory even for readers who prefer two-legged animals."