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Amazon.com Review
Rachel Alexander, PI, and Dash, her pit bull, are back again in a fourth outing of this winning series, which does a lot to counteract the negative image of the breed--the four-footed rather than the flat-footed variety. When Sophie Gordon, an epileptic teacher at a school for deaf children, asks Rachel to find Side by Side, the mysterious organization that cloned her faithful companion Blanche, Rachel finds more than she bargained for, not only more than one carbon copy of Sophie's pet, but a litter of trouble. Sophie loves Bianca, the supposedly cloned animal Side by Side promised her, but Bianca doesn't seem to have inherited the one trait that makes Blanche so valuable and that others suffering from Sophie's disease require: the ability to warn their owner when a seizure's coming. Concerned that whoever gets the other clones won't be able to rely on them for assistance, she sets Rachel on the trail of the veterinarian who supposedly cloned her pet. Then Sophie dies in what turns out to be murder, and although Rachel no longer has a client, she's determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. Motivated as much by concern for what will happen to Blanche and Bianca now that Sophie's dead, she presses on with her investigation despite her personal misgivings about the implications of cloning and soon finds herself a murder target. This is a smart, carefully paced mystery that has a nice surprise tucked into the conclusion. Rachel's doggy-love seems more important than her feelings for her boyfriend, a dog psychologist, or any other human, but her emotions are entirely believable and likely shared by plenty of others who are owned by their pets. --Jane Adams
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