BOOK & BLOG

October 9, 2005

Book of the Week: Without a Word by Carol Lea Benjamin

I had a choice of good books to talk about this week. I read two really excellent mysteries, Jodi Compton’s The 37th Hour, and Carol Lea Benjamin’s Without A Word. I decided to focus on Benjamin’s simply because Carol is a friend of mine, in the way writers who don’t get to see each other too often can form a bond. I admire Carol immensely because she says what she thinks, stands up for herself without a qualm, and she’ll do anything to make life more pleasant for Dexter, her constant canine companion. For someone who was brought up in the indirect ways of a Southern woman, this seems absolutely amazing and admirable.

Without A Word is another novel in Benjamin’s series about Rachel Alexander, a private eye who is as tough and logical as any private eye on the scene today. Rachel has a partner who happens to be a dog, and the two make a formidable team. Now, there are books where the animals are sleuths, and there are books where the amateur detective is an avid pet owner, but I have to admit, those are not my favorites. In Carol’s books, Dashiell (a pit bull) is a dog – not a human wearing a dog suit. Dash has lots of capabilities, and he’s often preferable to a human partner, but he’s a DOG . . . to Rachel, a separate but equal being.

Having given all this background, it’s only fair I actually discuss this specific book. Rachel is approached by Leon Spector, former teacher and current photographer, whose daughter Madison has been accused of stabbing her pediatrician with an injection of Botox. Madison, who has been silent since her mother Sally vanished five years before, will not utter a word in her own defense, and her father, who has no way of connecting with the 12-year-old, resorts to Rachel. He wants Rachel to find his wife, in the hopes that being reunited with Sally will open Madison’s lips. What Rachel discovers, in her search for Sally, are hard truths about what people will do when faced with circumstances utterly beyond their control.

If you enjoy Without A Word as much as I did, you’re in for a real treat, because you’ll get to read all the other Rachel and Dash books for the first time.

Blog

Finally, cool weather! I actually wore long sleeves yesterday for the first time in many months, and the dogs were content to lie around outside rather than yipping to get in by the air conditioner. Our oldest dog, Sugar, even ran a little bit, something that’s almost beyond her. (She’s our oldest in terms of how long she’s lived with us; we don’t actually know how old she may be. We figure she’s between twelve and fourteen.)

Our vet is trying something new on the animals he’s hosting that were sent up from New Orleans. It’s called DAP, and it’s dog pheromones in a device that plugs into the wall like a scent dispenser. The pheromones are supposed to calm your upset canine. Since Sugar had been at the vet’s for two weeks and had two operations (Sugar has cancer), he loaned us the device after Sugar showed she was very jangled at being separated from us for so long. With some misgivings, we plugged it in. I don’t know if it was the DAP, or simply time and healing, but Sugar did seem to calm down. She didn’t bark if we closed the bedroom door, she didn’t want to go in and out five times during the night, etc. It was a definite improvement.

We didn’t notice any difference in our other two dogs, Rocky and Oscar.

I hope the animals shipped up here from New Orleans got some benefits from the pheromone therapy. God knows, those poor creatures need help. I wish there were an easy answer to many problems facing us in the wake of this catastrophe, but there’s no instant fix for the humans or for the animals caught up in it.

For those of you who are muttering, “Doesn’t she like cats?”, let me hastily add that I love cats very much. But my husband and daughter are both allergic, and after trying various things (yes, including shots, including keeping the cat outside), we had to reach the sane conclusion that life was better for them if we just didn’t have a cat. We had two ferrets for several years, and I adored them, but with reservations. Eventually, Slinky and Harry went to the happy ferret hunting ground in the sky, and I hope they are hiding television remotes and tubes of Neosporin to their hearts’ content.

Since I finished Carol’s book, I’ve been thinking of all that animals add to our lives. I think I’ve had a pet continuously throughout my life, except for the few years I lived in an apartment and was gone all day. I’ve already blathered a long time about dogs today, but I’ll just say that having an animal around makes my life better in a lot of ways, some serious and some not so serious. At the very least, I have a live creature to talk to, so I don’t look like I’m talking to myself, and that’s not the least of the positive effects!