Steve’s ripe for a new relationship—divorced, over forty, and still dusting himself off from a lamentable sojourn in prison, an unusual experience for a professor, to say the least. (He really must do something about his hacking habit!)
Rochester’s a handsome, homeless, loveable golden retriever whom Steve had always found too big, too enthusiastic, and too shaggy.
But tragedy struck their neighborhood when someone murdered Caroline, Steve’s nice next-door neighbor, while she walked her best friend, Rochester. Steve’s the unlucky guy who finds her body and he just knows, despite their differences, that he has to take in the broken-hearted pooch.
Once they’re both properly rehomed, these two form a detective partnership that’ll make you sit up and beg for more. Eat your hearts out, Spade & Archer—pretty soon they’ve got a warm and fuzzy thing going. Big furry forthrightness—not to mention heart—meets tech-savvy craftiness as they work their case.
Rochester has no idea he has the potential to be the greatest doggy detective since Rex the Wonder Dog was a pup. But he’s got a job to do and he has to find a way to train Steve in the fine art of investigation. Unbeknownst to Steve, his life just changed radically—because a big furry mentor has just trotted into it. Both want justice for Caroline, and Rochester’s way of expressing it is simply to sniff out one clue after another in the hope his two-legged colleague can piece them together.
Steve’s way—when all’s said and done— is still to bend the law a little, with the help of Caroline’s contraband laptop. And also to follow Rochester’s trail of treats.
I've wanted to be an author since I was about sixteen, when a high school assignment on A Separate Peace showed me how powerful writing can be. At the University of Pennsylvania I studied creative writing with Philip Roth and Carlos Fuentes; I went on to receive my MFA from Florida International University.
My first published novel was Mahu, about a Honolulu homicide detective dragged out of the closet during a tough case. I put a lot of myself into Kimo Kanapa'aka, the hero, and yet he’s very much his own character, and much better than I am! He has had a powerful hold on my imagination for many years. I love writing about him and hope to keep doing so for a long time. He’s also the source of my favorite reader question. A few years ago, someone emailed to ask if he was circumcised.
My first reaction was “Man, I’ll bet Stephen King doesn’t get questions like that.” But then, his are probably even weirder. I went online and did some research and discovered that at the time Kimo was born, hospital circumcisions were common. So there you go.
My path to publication was a long and checkered one, as is the case with many authors. My first published stories were magazine erotica, and I still like to keep my hand in (no pun intended) with that kind of writing. But for the most part now I write mystery and romance—all my books seem to have both those elements, though in different proportions.
I began writing the golden retriever mysteries because I spent so much time walking my golden, Samwise (yes, I’m a Tolkien geek). He had so many funny habits and such a strong personality that I just knew I had to write a book that featured a dog like him. (Fortunately, Sam had no habit of finding dead bodies.)
I live in Hollywood, Florida now, with my partner and our golden retrievers, Brody and Griffin.