Jeffrey Cohen As Dog Is My Witness

As Dog Is My Witness

Jeffrey Cohen

Bancroft, Nov 2005, $16.95, 280 pp.

ISBN: 1890862436

Michael Huston is walking the family dog, Dalma the Dalmatian one night, eager to get back to his wife when a person wearing a hood, so he isn't recognizable, shoots and kills him. The police go to gun expert, twenty-two year old Justin for some information about the gun that killed Michael, and find the gun in his room. He admits to killing the man, but doesn't give a motive, and since Justin has Asperger's syndrome, the police aren't interested in the why of it.

Freelance writer Aaron Tucker becomes involved, when his friend Lori Shery, the founder and president of ASPEN, asks him to find the real killer, since he has successfully solved two homicides that baffled the police. While Aaron tries to help Justin, he is coping poorly with his detestable visiting in-laws, dealing with a New Jersey Jewish mafia chieftain who knows more about the case than he is saying, and helping out a friend whose work is being sabotaged. In addition to all these jobs, he must squeeze in some time on his paying job, revising his screen play.

Readers who like a wholesome who done it with no blood, gore or profanity, will definitely want to read the entire series of the Aaron Tucker mystery novels. AS DOG IS MY WITNESS is the best work in this charming and often humorous series, because the who done it is superbly constructed with quite a few viable suspects, but readers also learn and understand somewhat, what Asperger's syndrome is and how it impacts the entire family.