Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

✍ Scribed by Benjamin, Carol Lea

• Book ID: 108588155
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 124 KB
• Series: Rachel Alexander 2
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0802733123

✦ Synopsis

The key to a beautiful woman's tragic death is locked in a dog's broken heart.

P.I. Rachel Alexander is stepping into a dead woman's life. Hired by the young t'ai chi teacher's grieving parents, Rachel is determined to find out why their apparently happy daughter jumped from the window of her Greenwich Village martial arts studio. Wearing Lisa's clothes, studying with her mentor, meeting her friends, provoking her enemies, Rachel soon learns that even with her pit bull, Dashiell, at her side, the path to enlightenment is a dangerous place to be.

With the answer Rachel seeks as difficult to fathom as a Zen riddle, yet as close by as the victim's sad-eyed Akita, one truth begins to unfold: Lisa never would have abandoned her dog without a cruel push. . . .

From Library Journal

Benjamin's second series mystery fulfills the promise of her debut, This Dog for Hire (LJ 11/1/96). A wealthy couple hire Rachel Alexander, a free-spirited sleuth who lives in Greenwich Village with her pit bull, Dashiell, to find out why their apparently happy daughter jumped out a fifth-floor window. Rachel finds the answer (murder, of course) by "assuming" the dead woman's life: wearing her clothes, learning t'ai chi, and meeting her friends. Crisp, clean, and focused, with a great heroine and canines; an enjoyable read.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Why mess with success? Dog-trainer/p.i. Rachel Alexander's second case is so much like her fine debut (This Dog for Hire, 1996) that she could sue herself for plagiarism. Again there's a mysterious death--this time t'ai chi instructor Lisa Jacobs's alleged suicide--witnessed only by the victim's dog; again the stricken survivors are looking for an explanation for the inexplicable (why would got-it-all Lisa leave a note saying, I'm sorry. Lisa,'' and take a header out her window?); again Rachel hits the mean streets accompanied by her pit bull Dash.You won't learn anything worthwhile about Lisa by asking questions,'' Lisa's mentor and former boss Avi Ashkenasi tells Rachel. ``You must walk in her shoes.'' So as Rachel sweats to figure out which of Lisa's friends and students would've been most unhinged by her plans to move to China--and sweats too at the t'ai chi studio, the swimming pool, and the gym where she goes to ask all the questions she shouldn't--she wears Lisa's perfume and bracelet as well as her shoes, carries her keys, and beds her lover, half-Chinese swim coach Paul Wilcox. But her attempts to isolate a prime suspect fail when the front-runner gets killed--just like last time--clearing the way for another ton of moondust and (a sad innovation) an abrupt and arbitrary climax. Rachel's fans are advised to sit out her case of second- novel blues and wait for next year. If you missed her first, though, you may want to check out the most helpful canine sleuth since Asta. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.