A Book's Best Friend

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  The phrase used to be “Man’s best friend.”  But when it comes to adorable dogs, DavidBurnsworth has realized they also are  “Book’s best friend.”

     And you’ll be touched to know all these darling pooches’ photos David sent us are from the Spartanburg Humane Society—and they are all available for adoption, he says, right now.

A Book’s Best Friend

  

  By David Burnsworth

        There are two characters in my Brack Pelton mystery series--above all--that readers ask about and comment on. The first is a local minister by the name of Brother Thomas whose major role is to be Brack’s conscience. The other character, one I probably need to include in more scenes, is Brack’s rescue mixed-breed dog Shelby.

           In general, the readers respect Brother Thomas, but they love Shelby.

As a dog lover, I can relate. I would not have written the series without some form of canine sidekick. Shelby’s magic showed up on the page in his ability to get women in the story to fall head over heels for him. My protagonist Brack is somewhat of a ladies man, but he pales in comparison to Shelby. When the two of them are together, Brack takes second chair while his dog steals the scene.

Because Brack gets himself into dangerous situations, he sometimes has to stay away from obvious places where he might be found, like his home. But he still has the responsibility of taking care of Shelby. This is where Trish, Shelby’s other caretaker, comes into the story. Trish is the wife of Brack’s lawyer. And Trish fell in love with Shelby the moment she met him.

On more that one occasion, Brack felt as if Trish would pack up and leave Charleston, taking Shelby with her. Trish’s husband feels the same way. This extra layer of stress for Brack always comes at a time when he already has a lot to deal with. With much trepidation does Brack make the call to Trish to watch over Shelby while he has to run around Charleston righting wrongs.

Of course Shelby isn’t unique in any four-legged regard. While he is a consistent but secondary character for my books, the first person point of view of one of my favorite series, Chet and Bernie, is the one-hundred-pound mutt Chet the Jet. The story is well written and convincing. Spencer Quinn has a winner and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

John Sanford recently gave Virgil Flowers a dog.  I am anxiously awaiting the next book to see how Virgil, a bachelor with a busy life as an investigator in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, handles the responsibility. CJ Box’s game warden Joe Pickett rides around in his pickup truck with Daisy, his family dog. Daisy gives Joe someone to talk to as he travels the vast expanse of Wyoming. 
And Robert Crais’s thriller, Suspect, focuses on a K-9 unit. The main characters, Scott James and his new German shepherd partner, Maggie, are damaged goods. Both lost their partners and suffer from different forms of PTSD as they bond in their new assignment. I can’t wait for the next book with them, The Promise, where they team up with Crais’s other great characters, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. What a great book that is going to be.

For those of us who are dog people, why we adore these four-legged sidekicks is a no-brainer. Just as our pets enrich our lives, the fictional ones running across the pages of our favorite books add so much more, both to the story and to the characters who take care of them.

So, which non-human characters are your favorites?

HANK: I agree--LOVE Chet.  And, um, Pooh. Oh,  I could go on. And of course, there are big pitfalls to giving a character a pet, right?  But how about you, Reds? Favorite fictional animals?

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David Burnsworth became fascinated with the Deep South at a young age. After a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and fifteen years in the corporate world, he made the decision to write a novel. 

Southern Heat is his first mystery and the sequel, Burning Heat, debuted in January. Having lived in Charleston on Sullivan’s Island for five years, the setting was a foregone conclusion. He and his wife call South Carolina home.