Dick Lochte is an award-winning, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of numerous crime novels, including The Talk Show Murders with Al Roker. He and his wife Jane live in Southern California with their dog Hoagy. Lochte's newest novel, with William M Webster IV, is Rockets' Red Glare.
At The Strand Magazine Lochte tagged six notable crime fiction canines, including:
ROBERT CRAIS’S MAGGIERead about the other canines on the list.
Crais’ main sleuth, Elvis Cole, essentially a younger West Coast version of Spenser, is more cat- than dog-lover, but in the novel, Suspect, another of the author’s protagonists, LAPD K-9 officer Scott James walks his beat with Maggie, a retired military German shepherd. She is suffering a canine version of PTSD caused by the death of her handler and her own wounds after a bombing attack in Afghanistan. Scott himself has not quite recovered from a devastating ambush byunidentified assailants who killed his human partner. Just as in Rockets’ Red Glare, after Sage and Peak are nearly killed by explosives left by the assassins, the bond between man and dog is more than mere companionship—it’s one of healing.
Crais writes some of the novel from Maggie’s point of view, displaying astonishing empathy while allowing readers into her memory-driven, sensory world. In this Maggie clearly is not just a sidekick or emotional support; she’s a protagonist. Though the crimes she helps solve are important, they’re secondary to the deeper story: two wounded souls rebuilding by trusting one another. (Further examples of novels that take readers into the minds of dogs include Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie series, narrated by Chet the canine partner of Bernie the down-at-heels private eye, and several of Dean Koontz’s bestselling fantasies, including Watchers which features Einstein, a genetically altered golden retriever who understands human language and has near-human intelligence.)
--Marshal Zeringue
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