Minotaur
April 14, 2026
Reviewed by Mary-Jane Oltarzewski
It’s absolutely possible to begin reading Spencer Quinn’s Chet and Bernie series with Cat on a Hot Tin Woof, the sixteenth and most recent entry. Each novel stands alone as a clever, quick-witted detective story narrated by Chet, the canine half of the partnership known as the Little Detective Agency. (The human half is Bernie Little, a tough talking, hard-hitting, big-hearted West Point graduate and decorated combat veteran.) Long-time fans, however, will recognize the significance of the title: it harkens back to the very early days of the partnership, when Chet, a huge, energetic rescue dog, failed out of a police K-9 training program despite his speed, strength, and utter enthusiasm for the job. On the final day of training, a mishap occurred that changed the trajectory of both lives forever.
A cat was involved.
Mayhem ensued, and Chet’s career as a police dog was over before it began. Bernie, however, was impressed with Chet’s agility and intelligence, and since that day, Chet has been his steadfast companion and loyal partner in fighting crime. He has also been the insightful and increasingly poetic teller of these tales. Standing guard by night over a new client, he describes the scene:
“The moon came out of nowhere in the window, only part of the moon was up there, just a slice. Where did the rest go? I was wondering about that when … [h]er eyes opened. They glistened in the moonlight and even seemed to become the moonlight. Hey! That was where the rest of the moon had gone! Wow! I understood things like never before. And not only that. I also knew that Bitty was very special. She had moonlight inside her.”
Like most poets, Chet takes moonlight very seriously. He understands nearly everything that humans say in English, but in a very literal sense; he’s not good with metaphorical language and blithely admits that he can’t keep track of numbers any higher than two. His senses of hearing and smell, however, are off the charts, and he has an exceptionally intuitive understanding of human emotion.
He still can’t stand cats, however, and is not overly thrilled when Bernie signs on to search for an internet-famous feline named Miss Kitty, who has gone missing under mysterious circumstances. Miss Kitty is a viral sensation with over 6 million followers on social media, represented by a PR agency that has monetized her Zenlike countenance to the tune of $75,000.00 a month. But now her followers and sponsors are impatiently demanding more content, and her primary owners – a sweet, fragile teenager named Bitty and her mother, a well meaning but bitter divorcee – are getting desperate. Bitty is devastated by the loss of her beloved pet, while her mother, who has quit her job to manage the “Bitty and Miss Kitty” account, is more concerned about the potential loss of income.
Chet, as smart as he is, has no comprehension of how social media works. The funny thing is, Bernie isn’t much better; neither is prepared for the way an idea, a person, or an animal goes viral. When Bernie downloads a social media app in order to view the Bitty and Miss Kitty account, the algorithm takes hold, linking him almost instantly to an ever increasing number of cat-adjacent videos. This rapid-fire display of animals and people and unbridled consumerism leads an overwhelmed Chet to observe that “The algorithm was a perp of the very worst kind and needed to be in an orange jumpsuit breaking rocks in the hot sun pronto.” There’s a lot of truth to that, but the algorithm is not the only perp they’re pursuing.
The prime suspect is ruled out early on, when Chet and Bernie discover his corpse not once, but twice, on two separate occasions, in two different locations. Chet comes close to locating the perp shortly thereafter, but loses track of them when he is flung airborne while attempting to apprehend the driver of a speeding car, while hanging on by his teeth, halfway in and halfway out of the window. It’s fearless, real-world skills like these, along with little help from their friends of many species, that enable Chet and Bernie to leave the virtual world behind, and find real-world justice for Bitty and Miss Kitty.
As Chet, that poet of the natural world says, “The stars shone down on us. We were lucky to have them. Were they lucky to have us? I couldn’t see why not.” Old fans and new readers can consider themselves lucky to have this latest installment.