Rachel Alexander and her pitbull sidekick, Dash, are hired by a woman who has become involved in a bizarre scheme to clone her special service dog, who can detect when someone is about to have a seizure, but their case is soon complicated by the murder of their client. Rachel Alexander, PI, and Dash, her pit bull, are back again in a fourth outing of this winning series, which does a lot to counteract the negative image of the breed--the four-footed rather than the flat-footed variety. When Sophie Gordon, an epileptic teacher at a school for deaf children, asks Rachel to find Side by Side, the mysterious organization that cloned her faithful companion Blanche, Rachel finds more than she bargained for, not only more than one carbon copy of Sophie's pet, but a litter of trouble. Sophie loves Bianca, the supposedly cloned animal Side by Side promised her, but Bianca doesn't seem to have inherited the one trait that makes Blanche so valuable and that others suffering from Sophie's disease require: the ability to warn their owner when a seizure's coming. Concerned that whoever gets the other clones won't be able to rely on them for assistance, she sets Rachel on the trail of the veterinarian who supposedly cloned her pet. Then Sophie dies in what turns out to be murder, and although Rachel no longer has a client, she's determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. Motivated as much by concern for what will happen to Blanche and Bianca now that Sophie's dead, she presses on with her investigation despite her personal misgivings about the implications of cloning and soon finds herself a murder target. This is a smart, carefully paced mystery that has a nice surprise tucked into the conclusion. Rachel's doggy-love seems more important than her feelings for her boyfriend, a dog psychologist, or any other human, but her emotions are entirely believable and likely shared by plenty of others who are owned by their pets. --Jane Adams Adult/High School-In their latest outing, the New York City detective duo of dog trainer and trained dog get involved with a missing-person case that transmogrifies into a murder case and ends as a medical-ethics case. Hired by an epileptic teacher of deaf children to find the agency that supposedly cloned her seizure-alert bulldog, Rachel and Dash stay on the case after the woman is murdered. While aspects of Rachel's character rely on information from previous titles in the series, Dash and the canines introduced in the story at hand are fully realized. There are sufficient red herrings to keep avid detective fans interested, but nothing so clever as to scare away readers new to the genre. The ethical issue of cloning is placed in the spotlight in all its complexity, including a surprisingly creepy ending that goes beyond the issue of dog replication. The science of cloning, as well as the educational setting in which the victim works, seems removed from factual accuracy, but the issues-nature versus nurture, the constraints placed on severely epileptic persons, the devotion a good teacher earns from her students-are quite credibly developed. And the dogs are all genuinely man's-and woman's-best friends.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Sophie Gordon, a special-education teacher with epilepsy, hires sleuth and dog trainer Rachel Alexander to help her find a doctor who cloned a white bull-terrier puppy from Blanche, Sophie's ailing seizure-alert dog. The puppy cannot detect seizures, and Sophie wants to alert the doctor. But just after Rachel and her pit bull, Dash, take the case, Sophie dies suspiciously, and shadowy criminals pursue Rachel. This fifth Rachel Alexander mystery is one of the series' best. Benjamin's human and canine characters are vivid; the story's pace is as quick and sure as a sled drawn by Samoyeds; and the mystery itself is edgy and difficult to solve. Along the way, there are interesting details on cloning, special education, and the challenges of epilepsy. The obvious comparisons for this outstanding tale are Susan Conant's, Laurien Berenson's and Virginia Lanier's canine mysteries, but Benjamin writes with a harder edge than any of these authors. Don't hesitate to recommend this series to those who would usually dismiss crime novels with dogs in starring roles. John Rowen Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved