Spencer Quinn. Tender is the Bite. Forge, 2021.

Tender is the Bite, as some readers might guess, is the latest installment of the adventures of Chet and Bernie. That is, for the uninitiated, private detective Bernie Small and his German Shepherd sidekick Chet.

As usual, the novel title is a word play on a famous novel. Usually the title is clever but not especially relevant to the story except that the narrator is a dog. This time it is slightly different. Bernie actually says the line, “Tender is the bite.” And there is another creature that does bite Bernie, but not too badly, i.e. a tender bite.

That creature is Griffie the ferret. One of the recurring mysteries of the story is that Griffie keeps showing up, but always in a different place with a different person. Whom does he actually belong to? And why does he turn up in the possession of so many different people like Mavis, Johnnie Lee, Neddy, Olek, and whoever it is that owns a dumpster?

The mystery is a drawn-out affair. Bernie meets the very attractive Mavis who thinks she wants to hire him but doesn’t. When he follows up, he finds out she has moved and her former roommate clearly does not trust Bernie. We soon discover that the roommate, Johnnie Lee, had placed a restraining order on her former boyfriend who may have had criminal ties.

To say much more would give away too much. Needless to say, though, a few of the main characters end up dead. There is an intricate plot that involves some high stakes international finance, an organized criminal syndicate, and a state senator. Bernie believes that at least one of the victims may have not realized how high the stakes were and that he really had gone in over his head.

The ongoing mistrust between Captain Ellis of the local police department (Yes, he got promoted) and Bernie continues. In fact, it gets much worse. We also learn something of why Ellis may have held a grudge against Bernie.

There is also a tip of the hat to Butch Cassidy. There is a remote desert hideout that the local high school kids call the Hole in the Wall. So, yes, we are back in Chet and Bernie’s home territory. In this case there is even a side trip (maybe two, Chet’s not big on geography) to New Mexico. That’s speed trap territory to Chet.

Because of Chet’s keen sense of smell and hearing, the reader knows certain things before Bernie does. Still there is a lot of mystery in this story, and the dots are not connected until the end.

As always much of the enjoyment of these stories comes from the narrative voice of Chet, the dog. Here are some examples:

The air was full of horsey smells, somewhat like cattle, actually, but grassier and way more nervous. Horses are prima donnas, each and every one, always moments away from a panic attack. That makes it tempting to…to…I kept that bad thought to myself. (111)

Some restaurants don’t welcome me and my kind. That’s a bit of a puzzler. Me and my kind love food. Lots of humans are food lovers, too, but they can be fussy. Take Leda [Bernie’s ex-wife], for example, who sends something back at every meal. You don’t see that with my guys. (172-173)

When speaking of another dog, Trixie, Chet says:

Oh, poor Trixie! Not the cone! But it was the cone, all right. There are many great human inventions—the Porsche, for example—and also some bad ones, of which the cone is one of the very worst. (195)

You get the idea. Chet is a great storyteller, even if he gets distracted. Some stories have recurring scents as well as, in this case, a recurring ferret. In To Fetch a Thief there is the recurring scent of elephant. In Tender is the Bite Chet keeps noticing the scent of vinegar. It is remarkable what criminal minds can do with vinegar.