Paw and Order: A Chet and Bernie Mystery

Bestseller Quinn’s subpar seventh Chet and Bernie mystery (after 2013’s The Sound and the Furry) takes Bernie Little, head of the Little Detective Agency, and his canine partner, Chet, from Arizona to Washington, D.C., where Bernie hopes to mend relations with his significant other, Suzie Sanchez, now a reporter at the Washington Post. After Suzie stumbles across the corpse of Eben St. John, a mysterious British consultant who fancies her, the cops tag Bernie as the prime suspect because the PI’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon. St. John’s murder may be connected with the possible presidential campaign of a respected retired general, but the politics of the race are as sketchy as the details of the whodunit plot. Still, dog lovers will enjoy Chet’s original, offbeat narration, which makes the most of the limits of his understanding of humans. Author tour. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency. (Aug.)