Benjamin, Carol Lea

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Benjamin, Carol Lea

PERSONAL:

Married.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Brandt & Brandt Literary Agents, 1501 Broadway, Ste. 2310, New York, NY 10036. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. Has worked as a private investigator, teacher, and dog trainer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Shamus Award, Private Eye Writers of America, 1996, for This Dog for Hire: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(And illustrator) Dog Training for Kids, Howell Book House (New York, NY), 1976.

(With Arthur J. Haggerty; and illustrator) Dog Tricks: New Tricks for Old Dogs, Old Tricks for New Dogs, and Ageless Tricks That Give Wise Men Paws, Dolphin Books (Garden City, NY), 1978.

(And illustrator) Running Basics, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1979.

Dog Problems: A Professional Trainer's Guide to Preventing and Correcting Aggression, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1981.

Cartooning for Kids, T.Y. Crowell (New York, NY), 1982.

(And illustrator) Mother Knows Best: The Natural Way to Train Your Dog, Howell Book House (New York, NY), 1985.

Writing for Kids, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1985.

(And illustrator) Second-hand Dog: How to Turn Yours into a First-Rate Pet, Howell Book House (New York, NY), 1988.

The Chosen Puppy: How to Select and Raise a Great Puppy from an Animal Shelter, Howell Book House (New York, NY), 1990.

Surviving Your Dog's Adolescence: A Positive Training Program, Howell Book House (New York, NY), 1993.

(And illustrator) Dog Training in Ten Minutes, Howell Book House (New York, NY), 1997.

FICTION

The Wicked Stepdog, T.Y. Crowell (New York, NY), 1982.

Nobody's Baby Now, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1984.

This Dog for Hire: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, Walker & Co. (New York, NY), 1996.

The Dog Who Knew Too Much: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, Walker & Co. (New York, NY), 1997.

Dash P. I., GuildAmerica Books, 1997.

A Hell of a Dog: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, Walker & Co. (New York, NY), 1998.

Lady Vanishes: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, Walker & Co. (New York, NY), 1999.

The Wrong Dog: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, Walker & Co. (New York, NY), 2000.

The Long Good Boy: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, Walker Publishing (New York, NY), 2001.

Fall Guy: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

Without a Word: A Rachel Alexander Mystery, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2005.

The Hard Way: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Carol Lea Benjamin has worked as a dog trainer and as a private investigator. Not surprisingly, her fiction combines these two fields of knowledge in mysteries featuring a female private detective and her faithful sidekick Dash, a pit bull terrier. Benjamin won a prestigious Shamus Award for her novel This Dog for Hire: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, the first title to feature the intrepid Rachel Alexander and her realistically depicted canine helper. Since then Rachel and Dash have solved all manner of murders together, some of them in the seamier sections of New York City. Benjamin is not the first author to feature a dog in a whodunit, but her books are singular in their treatment of dogs as dogs and not anthropomorphic semi-human characters. A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted: "There's nothing coy about how Benjamin … portrays animals." The resulting novels are strong on mystery, not canine anecdote.

Before she created Rachel Alexander and Dash, Benjamin wrote numerous nonfiction books and two novels for younger readers. Whether her nonfiction titles cover running, dog training, or cartooning, many of them feature her own drawings, and her prose is noteworthy for its candor and easy-to-follow directions. In a New York Times Book Review piece on Benjamin's Writing for Kids, Maurice Carroll stated: "This book is so sprightly and packed with bright quotes it could almost make you think writing is fun." Carroll added that the work would be "helpful … to anyone who wants to write and has trouble finding a voice and getting started." Carole B. Kirkpatrick in the School Library Journal called Dog Training for Kids a "thorough, knowledgeable and interesting book," and Library Journal correspondent Ellen Finnie deemed Surviving Your Dog's Adolescence: A Positive Training Program to be "an entertaining book teeming with good advice."

For young readers, Benjamin has written the novels The Wicked Stepdog and Nobody's Baby Now. In The Wicked Stepdog, Louise Branford must cope not only with adolescence but also with a new stepmother who arrives with a large golden retriever named Beany. When Louise inherits the responsibility of caring for Beany, her frustration and sense of isolation almost overwhelm her. A contributor to the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books felt that the story "shows considerable insight into the problems of a volatile only child." Nobody's Baby Now takes a sober look at the difficult issue of aging grandparents. Olivia, the novel's narrator, must put aside her youthful concerns when her ill and severely depressed grandmother comes into her home to live. Although Olivia is successful in breaking through her grandmother's self-imposed silence, she realizes that no amount of love can compensate for her grandmother's increasingly frail and dependent state. A reviewer for the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books commended Nobody's Baby Now for its "believable handling of two common problems." In her New York Times Book Review critique, Susan Bolotin noted that the novel "gets at the harsh realities of aging in a way that is as upsetting as it is honest." Bolotin concluded: "The story is grand, and its moral lessons are never contrived or heavy-handed."

The "Rachel Alexander and Dash" novels show a similar concern with social issues. In Lady Vanishes a therapy dog disappears from a group home for mentally ill patients. The award-winning This Dog for Hire offers a commentary on show dog breeding and the New York art world. The Wrong Dog tackles the issues of cloning and the services provided by a seizure-alert dog. Uniting all the plots are Benjamin's series characters, Rachel and Dash, who live and work together in the tough environs of Manhattan. In Booklist, John Rowen observed that Benjamin writes with a "harder edge" than other mystery writers who feature dogs in their books. Rowen felt that this edgy plotting makes the series interesting "to those who would usually dismiss crime novels with dogs in starring roles." A Publishers Weekly reviewer suggested that dog lovers "will relish the insights of an author who writes realistically about dogs and their relationships with people." Another Publishers Weekly critic, reviewing The Long Good Boy: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, concluded that Benjamin "makes her respect for her canine characters's intelligence abundantly clear." Another Publishers Weekly critic declared that Benjamin "writes with a wit nearly as sharp as Dash's teeth."

In A Hell of a Dog: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, Rachel is hired to keep the peace at a dog- training seminar, but the deaths of three trainers are not what she bargained for. Rowen, writing again in Booklist, felt this installment would "satisfy anyone who enjoys the steadily growing subgenre of pet mysteries," while a Publishers Weekly contributor felt the novel "makes good on the promise of [Benjamin's] debut." Likewise, Library Journal reviewer Alicia Graybill concluded: "Benjamin's mysteries are getting stronger as she goes along."

Benjamin continued her popular series with Fall Guy: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, a novel "set firmly in post-9/11 New York City," as Booklist reviewer Sue O'Brien noted. Rachel is named the executor of the estate of a police officer she barely knew, and as she examines the contents of the man's estate, she begins to wonder if his death really was due to suicide. O'Brien praised the "absorbing plot and … cast of quirky secondary characters" in this seventh book in the series. A Publishers Weekly reviewer also had praise for the book, commenting that "even die-hard mystery readers will keep guessing until the end."

The 2005 series addition, Without a Word: A Rachel Alexander Mystery "showcases the heroine's ample brains, tough facade, and big heart," according to Booklist contributor Jenny McLarin. Rachel is hired by a photographer to track down the wife who abandoned him and their daughter five years earlier. The daughter is now accused of murdering a doctor, and refuses to defend herself. The father hopes that if Rachel can trace the missing mother, this might give the daughter a reason to care about her life once again. McLarin found this book and the entire series "entertaining … for anyone who loves female sleuths, New York, or pit bulls." Similarly, a Kirkus Reviews critic thought "fans will wag their tails for the empathetic characters and all-too-plausible plot."

In the series' ninth installment, The Hard Way: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, Rachel disguises herself as a homeless woman to work undercover to track down a homeless man sought in a homicide case. Businessman Gardner Redstone was pushed under the wheels of a subway by this man and, though the police have given up hope of closing the case, Redstone's daughter has not, and hires Rachel. O'Brien, writing in Booklist, noted that despite the gritty urban setting of the book and the entire series, Benjamin nonetheless "employs a lighter, almost cozylike tone." A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded, "Benjamin brings a strong sense of place and social conscience to her latest outing." Jo Ann Vicarel, writing in the Library Journal, commented that the "Rachel Alexander and Dash" series was "one of the best mystery series around."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 1997, John Rowen, review of The Dog Who Knew Too Much: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, p. 62; October 1, 1998, John Rowen, review of A Hell of a Dog: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, p. 310; October 1, 2000, John Rowen, review of The Wrong Dog: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, p. 325; September 1, 2001, John Rowen, review of The Long Good Boy: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, p. 55; September 1, 2004, Sue O'Brien, review of Fall Guy: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, p. 67; June 1, 2005, Jenny McLarin, review of Without a Word: A Rachel Alexander Mystery, p. 1759; August 1, 2006, Sue O'Brien, review of Hard Way: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, p. 47.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, June, 1982, review of The Wicked Stepdog, pp. 182-183; May, 1984, review of Nobody's Baby Now, pp. 160-161.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 1997, review of The Dog Who Knew Too Much, p. 1416; October 1, 1998, review of A Hell of a Dog, p. 1415; August 15, 2004, review of Fall Guy, p. 778; June 15, 2005, review of Benjamin, Carol Lea: Without a Word, p. 664; September 1, 2006, review of The Hard Way, p. 875.

Library Journal, May 15, 1981, review of Dog Problems, p. 1088; February 1, 1993, reviews of Mother Knows Best, Second-Hand Dog: How to Turn Yours into a First-Rate Pet, and The Chosen Puppy, p. 51; September 1, 1993, Ellen Finnie, review of Surviving Your Dog's Adolescence: A Positive Training Program, p. 212; September 1, 1997, review of The Dog Who Knew Too Much, p. 223; January 1, 1999, Alicia Graybill, review of A Hell of a Dog, p. 164.

New York Times Book Review, May 13, 1994, Susan Bolotin, review of Nobody's Baby Now, p. 21; December 29, 1985, Maurice Carroll, review of Writing for Kids, p. 23.

Publishers Weekly, August 6, 1982, review of Cartooning for Kids, p. 70; June 17, 1988, Penny Kaganoff, review of Second-Hand Dog, p. 62; October 4, 1993, review of Surviving Your Dog's Adolescence, p. 76; October 7, 1996, review of This Dog for Hire: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, p. 64; October 6, 1997, review of The Dog Who Knew Too Much, p. 78; November 30, 1998, review of A Hell of a Dog, p. 53; August 9, 1999, review of Lady Vanishes: A Rachel Alexander and Dash Mystery, p. 347; September 11, 2000, review of The Wrong Dog, p. 72; August 6, 2001, review of The Long Good Boy, p. 64; August 2, 2004, review of Fall Guy, p. 55; August 7, 2006, review of The Hard Way, p. 36.

School Library Journal, September 1, 1982, Dana Whitney Pinizzotto, review of Cartooning for Kids, p. 115; September, 1984, Hannah Pickworth, review of Nobody's Baby Now, p. 125; February, 1986, review of Writing for Kids, p. 81; April, 1989, review of Dog Training for Kids, p. 110.

Voice of Youth Advocates, December 1, 1997, review of The Dog Who Knew Too Much, p. 313.