Detailed item info | Synopsis | Dog trainer and P.I. Rachel Alexander and her pit bull, Dash, pursue their second case when Rachel's t'ai chi instructor takes an unexplained nose dive out of her window.
| | Size | | Length: | 272 pages | | Height: | 7.3 in. | | Width: | 4.5 in. | | Thickness: | 1.0 in. | | Weight: | 4.8 oz. |
| | Publisher's Note | New York P.I. Rachel Alexander sees more than her share of human suffering on the job. But with his playful antics, her partner Dash reminds her how delicious it is just to be alive. When Rachel's t'ai chi instructor, Lisa, is found dead by suicide, Lisa's grieving parents hire Rachel to find out why the young woman took her own life. The only known witness to Lisa's death is her dog, a sad-eyed Akita, but he's not talking. Suicide seems more and more unlikely as Rachel delves into Lisa's Greenwich Village neighborhood and wends closer to the truth.
The key to a beautiful womans tragic death is locked in a dogs broken heart.P.I. Rachel Alexander is stepping into a dead womans life. Hired by the young tai chi teachers 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 Lisas 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. . . .
| | Industry reviews | 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.
Stefanatos
Benjamin's delightful follow-up to her Shamus-nominated first novel, This Dog for Hire (1996), takes PI Rachel Alexander and her beloved pit bull, Dashiell, into the quiet world of a t'ai chi chuan dojo, or school, in New York's Greenwich Village. Lisa Jacobs was the perfect daughter, an only child who, to please her parents, gave up her dream to live in China to stay in New York, where she centered her life around the dojo. Now Lisa's parents want to know why she threw herself out of a window at the school. The only lead is a terse suicide note. Hoping to learn what despair could have driven this beautiful, gentle and by all accounts happy woman to take her own life, Rachel poses as Lisa's cousin and moves with Dash into Lisa's apartment. Taking classes with Avi, Lisa's teacher at the dojo, she moves deeper into Lisa's life and her own study of t'ai chi and into her investigation of Avi and the other students. After Lisa's boyfriend dies in what the police describe as an attempted mugging, Rachel discovers how hard Lisa had pursued her dreams and just how much danger she herself has been in since her masquerade began. Benjamin's prose has the fluidity of a mastered t'ai chi form. Her characters, from the enigmatic, Zen-quoting Avi to Lisa's heartbroken parents, are vividly drawn, especially Rachel, who's an amalgam of strength and softness and who brings to mind a young, wisecracking, East Coast Kinsey Milhone. (Oct.)
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