Here Doggy, Doggy, Doggy...

The Hand that Feeds You - A. J. Rich

It’s a dog owner’s worst nightmare: the pet that shares your life has attacked someone. In this case, it was worse… far, far, far worse. Morgan Prager came home to her Williamsburg apartment that afternoon only to find her three dogs – a Great Pyrenees and two rescue pit bulls – covered with blood. In her bedroom she found the body of her fiancé Bennett, so savagely mauled that the funeral could only be closed-casket. One of the pitties didn’t survive the arrival of the patrolmen who responded to Morgan’s frantic 9-1-1 call; the other two dogs were bundled off to the local pound’s version of death row. The only reason they stayed alive at all was that they were evidence in a homicide…

About that closed-casket funeral, though. Morgan couldn’t find Bennett’s family; couldn’t even find the apartment he claimed he had in Montreal or the music-promoter business whose website he’d shown her. What she did learn was that Bennett didn’t really exist. The irony was not lost on Morgan, whose thesis in forensic psychology was a study of female victims of predator. Yeah, first-hand knowledge there.

Morgan dug into her research, finding three other women who’d been scammed by different versions of Bennett, including one who swore he was still alive and emailing her. She had help; a friendly volunteer at the dog prison where her dogs were incarcerated and a lawyer who specialized in saving animals accused of mayhem.

Her life should have gotten back to normal. But it didn’t.

The Hand that Feeds You is the first collaboration between authors Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment, both devoted dog owners. With any luck, it won’t be the last (their somewhat preachy attitude about pit bulls notwithstanding). Of course, as someone wholly owned by a couple of dogs, I couldn’t help but be rooting for Prager to get her pooches acquitted. More to the point, however, the plot kept this reader, who regularly devours psychological thrillers like this one, guessing until the big reveal. Who was Bennett? Was he really still alive? How did he pull the wool over the eyes of someone who should have been an expert? Did Morgan’s dogs really kill him?

Read it yourself: you’ll be surprised, I guarantee it…

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