Occupation: Homicide Detective

When my friend Steve Levitan tried to convince me that his golden retriever, Rochester, has a nose for crime, I was skeptical.

My name is Rick Stemper, and I’m one of two police detectives in my hometown of Stewart’s Crossing, Pennsylvania. We handle all kinds of crimes in town and in the larger township that surrounds us.

I’ve been trained to deal in facts. Everything I put into my report must be documented. The district attorney relies on me and my fellow detective to provide information that can be submitted in court. So I can’t put in writing, “The dog dug up this clue.”

Steve and I met in a high school chemistry class but then we lost touch. When he returned home, we met up again and bonded, initially over our bad divorces. Then he inherited Rochester when his next-door-neighbor was murdered, and the dog kept uncovering clues that eventually led to the discovery of the person responsible.

Okay, I get that Rochester has 300 million olfactory receptors in his nose, compared to about six million in a human’s. And the part of a dog’s brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is about 40 times greater than ours. So it’s not surprising that he sniffs out human scent on items related to murders. I can see how he digs up evidence that our crime scene team missed.

But Steve insists that Rochester knows what he’s doing. That every swish of his tail, every bark at a bad guy, and every item he delivers in his soft jaws, comes from Rochester’s desire to help Steve and me solve cases. It took me a long time to come to terms with that, and even now I won’t tell my chief of police that my excellent case closing record is the result of help by a canine clue-sniffer.

There’s more to confess, though. I knew from the start that Steve had a problem with computer hacking. He was upfront about the year he spent in prison in California, and his temptation to snoop around places online where he shouldn’t be. For the first few cases we worked on together, he was very circumspect about where he got some of the information he gave me.

Eventually I realized what he was doing and, as an officer of the law, I had to put a stop to it. I told him he couldn’t break the law, even in his effort to bring a criminal to justice. And as his friend, I didn’t want anything he did to help me to send him back to prison.

Since then, he’s been more careful about using the snooping tools he keeps on a special laptop. He swears he’s acting as a white-hat hacker, identifying breaches that websites can close — after he’s learned what he needs. It’s an uneasy situation, but I know his heart is in the right place.

And I do like to see cases closed, even if the means to closing them might be a bit unorthodox.

Blessing Of The Dogs, A Golden Retriever Mystery Book #18
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: February 2024
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

Steve and Lili are on their way to the altar—but dognapping and murder get in the way.

The theft of the vice-mayor’s dog unveils a widespread pattern of canine thefts. Could those poor pooches be on their way to a testing lab or a puppy mill? And how does that case play into the death of a Billy Joel tribute act? Could the caterer they’ve hired be responsible?

It will take all of Steve’s hacking skills and Rochester’s talent for nosing out clues to close these cases before Steve and Lili can walk down the aisle… or will a killer ruin their happy ending?

Blessing of the Dogs blends humor, heart, and an intriguing puzzle only Steve, Rochester and readers can solve. It’s the perfect new installment for fans of this charming series.

About the author
Neil S. Plakcy is the author of over fifty mystery and romance novels, including eighteen in the golden retriever mystery series. His newest book is Blessing of the Dogs, and his website is mahubooks.com.