Someone is killing off the great dog trainers of the world—and it’s up to PI Rachel Alexander and her pit bull, Dash, to collar the murderer

Rachel has just been hired as undercover security at a dog-training symposium at a posh Manhattan hotel. How can the Greenwich Village PI and her pit bull, Dashiell, turn down the hefty fee, plus free room and biscuits at the Ritz? All Rachel has to do is keep the peace among the competitive diva dog trainers who have come with their prize pooches from all corners of the globe.

She and Dash have barely infiltrated the festivities when they find out that one of the trainers, the self-proclaimed guru of a controversial obedience technique, has been electrocuted in his bathtub. The cops are calling it an accident. Until another trainer dies . . . and then another. With suspects including a dog psychic and a behaviorist to the stars, Rachel discovers that it’s the humans who need to be housebroken as she and Dash bring a serial killer to heel.

My wife and I listened to ‘The Dog Who Knew Too Much‘ on our long post-Christmas drive north to family. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to listen to the next book, ‘A Hell of a Dog‘ (1998), on the way back home. We didn’t manage to finish it, so we listened to it together on our first evening at home. 

This was also fun but very different from the previous book. The first book was sad and introspective. This one was quite raucous by comparison. In ’The Dog Who Knew Too Much’, dogs were peripheral to the story. In ‘A Hell of a Dog’, dogs and the people who train them were at its heart. 

‘A Hell of a Dog‘ is a murder mystery, set in a week-long dog training symposium being run at a posh Manhattan hotel opposite Central Park. Rachel, an ex-dog trainer turned unlicensed PI, is working undercover, posing as a guest speaker on dog training, to identify and neutralise any unpleasantness between the other speakers. Some of the speakers hate each other and have been known to sabotage one another. Her task becomes more challenging when the speakers start to die. At first, the deaths seem accidental, but Rachel believes that the speakersmay be being murdered and sets out to find the murderer. 

Rachel is faced with a pool of a dozen suspects/potential victims, some of whom she knows well. The dog people are larger-than-life individuals who are strong on self-promotion, passionate about their own dog training method, and dismissive of everyone else’s. They argue endlessly, prank one another habitually, drink to excess, and see their stay in a conference hotel as unleashing them from their marriage vows. Vanity, infidelity, and dominance games power the plot. 

Then the presenters start to die. The manner of each of their deaths, while seeming accidental, echoes/ridicules their preferred dog training method. This leads to some very creative kills. 

Carol Lea Benjamin was a professional dog trainer who published half a dozen books designed to help novices train their dogs. Her knowledge of dogs and the dog world shone through, grounding this book firmly in reality. The descriptions of the trainers, their methods, and their idiosyncrasies were as entertaining as the mystery. 

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘Hell of a Dog’. Dina Pearlman’s narration brought the whole thing to life. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.