Spencer Quinn. A Farewell to Arfs. Forge, 2024.

Was it possible that anyone could throw out leftover bacon? How could bacon be left over? Yet that is what it smelled like. (122)

Yes, that is the typical canine perspective we have gotten used to and enjoyed from Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie mysteries. A Farewell to Arfs continues that entertaining style.

Bernie Little of the Little Detective Agency investigates a case that he may not really have a client for. In A Farewell to Arfs, his elderly neighbor, Mr. Parsons, gets a desperate phone call from his only son asking for two thousand dollars, just for the weekend. Parsons does this only to find out that someone has cleaned out his bank account of all its money, just under fifty thousand dollars. Bernie accompanies Parsons to the bank and offers to help him. One problem is that his son Billy has disappeared.

The second problem is that we know that Billy has not been the most respectful son. He has spent time in prison; however, from all accounts he has cleaned up his life. He now helps run a kind of twelve-step program for ex-convicts. Everyone who knows him now says that the old Billy has truly changed.

So what really happened? Mr. Parsons insists that it was his son talking to him on the phone, and also that it could not have been him that took his money. Still, his dog Iggy was barking just about the whole time he was on the phone.

As Chet and Bernie begin investigating, things get complicated quickly. They end up interviewing people from all kinds of backgrounds, including clients of Billy, Billy’s girlfriend, some brilliant computer geeks, professional gamblers, and contacts in the police department.

Bernie continues to have some girlfriend problems himself. He has actually proposed to longtime girlfriend and policewoman Weatherly. Almost as soon as he accepts, the relationship goes south. A certain thug has been harassing her. When Bernie visits the man and tells him to lay off, the harasser files a complaint. The gung-ho new district attorney tends toward the “defund the police” side in her politics and threatens to recall Bernie’s detective license.

As always Chet observes a few things that Bernie does not, but since he cannot communicate with words, Bernie has to make his own discovery later.

We note that this story has echoes of a Quinn standalone novel Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge in which a retired woman is scammed by criminal phone call. Indeed, A Farewell to Arfs even mentions in passing an article about a woman who tracked down the scammers to Romania and went there looking for them. In this case, the outcome is quite different. I compared that novel to something by Alexander McCall Smith. No one would confuse this story with something by him. It is a lot less mellow.

P.S. In my last review of a Chet and Bernie book, I complained that I guessed the “perp” from Hollywood stereotyping. Thankfully, this story did not do that.