Rachel Alexander, the protagonist of Carol Lee Benjamin’s This Dog for Hire, is a divorced, dog-trainer turned private eye. She had made a name for herself training show dogs but gave it all up when she married. When her marriage doesn't work out, she returns to New York where she lives in the guest house behind a lovely property with her pit bull, Dash, and becomes a private eye. Rachel is hired to find a valuable dog who disappears when his owner is run down on the end of a pier with the dog as a witness. Rachel finds the dog swiftly and then sets out to find the truth about the murderer. Is it the less than reputable dog trainer who has been profiting from the champion without the dead owner's knowledge or the less than reputable lover who profits from the victim's death by selling all his artwork?
This is a fast-paced and well-plotted book with the right mix of characters and scene changes. Benjamin excels at taking the reader through New York neighborhoods and sharing their unique characters and food, making them supporting characters within the story.
There are, however, some dissonant notes in the book. Rachel is a tough chick, and Benjamin’s short, choppy writing style and excessive profanity enforce this hard-nosed private eye mystique a little too much. She works too hard trying to make Rachel a detective out of old-school pulp fiction when she doesn’t have to. Rachel isn't all that likable, yet people like her for some unbelievable reason. She’s picking up new friends left and right when she’s not pleasant to anyone, but perhaps in comparison with the other unsavory characters, she appears charming. Rachel easily uncovers the thieving of the dog trainer because people are openly discussing it, yet the dog’s owner didn’t have a clue.
Those who like mysteries with dogs would probably enjoy the inner dog-show workings and key roles the dogs play in the novel. For those who are looking for an example of a hard-boiled detective novel, however, this would miss the mark.
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