The Good Boy

September 30, 2013
Eleven-year-old Joel Murphy and his father’s police dog, Butch, take center stage in this nail-biter from Edgar-winner Schwegel (Last Known Address). Officer Pete Murphy, Joel’s father and Butch’s handler and partner, is embroiled in a civil suit brought by the brother of a slain gang member, which all leads back to Murphy’s last big case involving the protection of—and potential affair with—an influential Chicago judge. Wallflower Joel slips through life largely unnoticed, playing elaborate versions of cops and robbers with a neighborhood girl, Molly, while his older sister, McKenna, flaunts her teenage spirit with parties and underage drinking. But when Joel and Butch see something they shouldn’t—and more importantly, someone sees them see it—they take off, each determined to take care of the other at any cost. The reader will empathize with everyone from Pete, who has his heart in the right place but makes several wrong turns, to Butch, who never speaks yet says volumes. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management.

November 1, 2013
A series of unlucky coincidences drops a boy and his dog down the rabbit hole of Chicago's meanest streets. Butch isn't really Joel Murphy's dog. The shepherd-Malinois mix, whose specialty is sniffing out drugs, is the partner of Joel's father, Officer Pete Murphy. Although Joel doesn't know it--he's only 11, and his parents don't share every bit of the family's bad news with him--Butch is already in trouble for attacking Ja'Kobe White, a gangbanger Pete had pulled over in a serious error of judgment. Now David Cardinale, White's bulldog lawyer, is suing the Chicago Police Department, and Pete's under serious pressure to change his story about the stop so that the case can go away. All this intrigue is part of the long, long buildup before the fateful night when Joel, worried about his big sister McKenna's involvement with some violent bullies, follows her to a party, taking along Butch as backup. The dog follows his nose to a stash, and in the resulting excitement, someone fires three shots, one of which ends up in Aaron Northcutt, one of the bullies. Fearful that Butch will have to be "youth-nized" for his breach of the peace, Joel takes it on the lam. With no money to speak of, no experience of the streets, and no one to turn to but Katherine Crawford, the judge whose involvement with Pete Murphy was the backdrop to Pete's current troubles, Joel has his work cut out for him. Despite his fear and vulnerability, however, the kid turns out to be as cool under pressure as Alice in Wonderland and as resourceful in his way as Odysseus sailing the Aegean. If only the same were true of the father looking for him. The air of constant menace depends on too many muddled subplots. But when Schwegel (Last Known Address, 2009, etc.) keeps the focus on Joel and his father, you won't be able to look away.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2013
Pete Murphy is steeped in bitterness after the Chicago PD sidelines him to the K-9 unit, hoping to dampen the scandalous brutality suit against him and public allegations of indiscretions with a local judge. Pete has dismissed his wife's nagging concerns about their children until a colleague alerts him that his daughter was at the scene of a house party that ended with a shooting. The same night, he discovers that his 11-year-old son, Joel, and his K-9 partner, Butch, have vanished. Hoping to rescue his sister from dangerous new friends, Joel and Butch followed her to the party and accidentally caused the shooting. Fearing the shooter's revenge and determined to keep Butch out of trouble, Joel evades gangsters and police as they search Chicago for the only person he's sure will give them a fair trial. Edgar Awardwinning Schwegel's descriptions of Chicago's streets through Joel's eyes are enlightening and tangible, but the slow-moving story lacks punch, and some readers may tire of Pete's self-pity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)