• Title:  Dog Eat Dog
• Author:  David Rosenfelt
• Genre:  Mystery
• Rating:  3.5 out of 5

Lawyer Andy Carpenter and his wife, Laurie, enjoy walking their dogs, Tara and Sebastian. By this point in their marriage, it’s routine. When out for one of their strolls, their simple ritual isn’t so simple anymore. Across the street, a man is mistreating his dog. Three things happen at once: Andy yells, Laurie runs to stop the abuse, and so does a closer passerby, who so thoroughly beats the owner that both are arrested when the cops arrive.

Andy scoops up the dog and takes him to the Tara Foundation, the dog rescue organization that’s always been his true passion. Meanwhile, at the police station, the passerby is identified as Matthew Jantzen, and he’s wanted for murder. Andy and Laurie are struck by the fact that Jantzen, a man on the run, would nevertheless intervene to help a dog, and decide to find out more.

This is book #23 in a series and…I won’t be reading any more. It wasn’t bad, but it felt like the entire book was populated with talking heads. I got no sense of what the characters or their actions looked like, no feel for the setting or anything. I enjoyed Andy’s self-deprecating humor, but his ego was too much for me, and this just wasn’t a good fit for me at all.

David Rosenfelt is from New Jersey. Dog Eat Dog is his newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books in exchange for an honest review.)

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