Chet and Bernie are back, with a new case--for which, unfortunately, they don't seem to have a client. A scared young woman follows them, then approaches them, and then bolts in terror after Chet, but not Bernie, sees her spot a bumper sticker that someone dropped into the back of the Porsche. A disturbing puzzle, but it's not clear what they can do. Soon, though, there's another scared young woman who also bolts on seeing something, a dead (male) body that disappears, a pet ferret who apparently belongs to one of the young women--who gets stolen out of the back of the Porsche while Chet and Bernie are inside a shop asking questions about the dead man.
Amongst all these goings-on, one of their neighbors is aggressively pushing the political campaign of a senator up for reelection. The neighbor also has an unusually extensive "home security system," or perhaps that's "neighborhood surveillance system."
The situation doesn't become any clearer when a Ukrainian businessman approaches Bernie with an extremely generous contract offer--spending several months acting as a security consultant for the construction of a new home for a bigger Ukrainian figure, in Hawaii. With gobs of money and lots of time for surfing. Oh, and flying Chet and Bernie there on a private plane so that Chet doesn't have to travel in a crate.
What does this have to do with two scared young women and an unexplained, vanished, dead body? Does it have anything to do with them? If it doesn't, how did The Little Detective Agency get plucked out of the phone book for this extremely lucrative job offer?
In some ways, this is an even more confusing case than usual, with disturbing things happening even in the police department, and a serious attempt at framing Bernie for the one clearly identifiable crime. Yet there are hints of possible good things as well, in the lives of our favorite dog detective and his human partner.
Recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
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