Spencer Quinn’s A Farewell to Arfs ups the ante in the action-packed and witty New York Times and USA Today bestselling series that Stephen King calls “without a doubt the most original mystery series currently available.”
Chet the dog, “the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction” (Boston Globe) and his human partner PI Bernie Little are on to a new case, and this time they’re entangled in a web of crime unlike anything they’ve ever seen before.
Their elderly next door neighbor, Mr. Parsons, thought he was doing the right thing by loaning his ne’er do well son, Billy, some money to help get himself settled. But soon, Mr. Parsons discovers that his entire life savings is gone. A run-of-the-mill scam? Bernie isn’t so sure that the case is that simple, but it’s Chet who senses what they’re really up against.
Only Billy knows the truth, but he’s disappeared. Can Chet and Bernie track him down before it’s too late? Someone else is also in the hunt, an enemy with a mysterious, cutting-edge power who will test Chet and Bernie to their limit—or maybe beyond. Even poker, not the kind of game they’re good at, plays a role.
Read onwards to see the incredible playlist you can jam out to while reading Spencer Quinn’s upcoming novel, A Farewell to Arfs!
By Spencer Quinn (Peter Abrahams):
Music, Sound, the Chet and Bernie Playlist, and A Farewell to Arfs
We seem to be in an era of scams—in our personal lives and perhaps in other societal regions. When it comes to personal scams there’s a new development, namely the use of artificial intelligence to replicate the voice of, say, a relative in trouble. AI is already good at this and of course getting better all the time. Okay. That’s by way of background. The Chet and Bernie mystery series is narrated by Chet, partner of Bernie, the private eye. Chet’s a dog. But not a talking dog! He’s as purely canine as I can make him. That makes him an unreliable narrator in some ways—alright, many—but a super-reliable narrator in others. One of those super-reliable categories is sound. Anyone who knows dogs knows they hear like we do not, both better and more richly. Therefore sound—and smell, of course—play a much bigger role in the Chet and Bernie series than they do in most other fiction. Which is part of the fun!
But forget fun. One day I was out on my bike ride, my mind wandering aimlessly—maybe its go-to state—when I suddenly thought: would Chet be fooled by an AI replicated voice? AI is built on human input, oceans of it. Chet swims in different waters. Aha, I thought to myself. And that was the genesis of A Farewell to Arfs, the new Chet and Bernie novel in a series designed—with no help from AI—to be read in any order.
If there was a totem pole of human sound, music would be at the top, in my opinion. Bernie is a music lover, given to singing—usually when he and Chet are alone, although also sometimes at parties when he’s had perhaps one too many. Three songs are mentioned in A Farewell to Arfs: “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” by Rev. Gary Davis; “God Walks These Dark Hills” by Iris Dement; and “If You Were Mine” by Billie Holiday. That last one is Chet’s favorite on account of Roy Eldridge’s dazzling trumpet solo that closes it out, the trumpet doing special things to Chet’s ears. Here’s a little snippet about that from A Farewell to Arfs. Chet and Bernie are watching Bernie’s son Charlie’s soccer practice. Charlie’s friend Esmé is also on the team. Malachi is her dad and he and Bernie have met before—at a Christmas party of which Bernie has only vague memories.
“You played Roy Eldridge’s trumpet solo from ‘If You Were Mine’?” Bernie said.
“At your request,” Malachi said. “And you handled Billie Holiday’s vocal.”
“Good grief,” said Bernie, meaning he must have forgotten how well he’d done. “But you played great, if I remember.”
“Not disgraceful,” Malachi said. “For an amateur. I’ve got no illusions about that. But I’ve always loved music. Not to sound too pompous—one of my failings, recently pointed out by Esmé but my wife agreed immediately—it’s my belief that music reveals the beauty of math even to folks who hate it.”
Bernie thought that over. “Esmé was saying something about this. You’re a mathematician?”
“Applied,” said Malachi, losing me completely, although I was already there.
Speaking of music, a Chet and Bernie fan named Mike Farley has compiled a Spotify playlist composed mostly of songs from the series. I’m so grateful for that, and for the high level of engagement readers seem to have with C&B. Here’s Mike’s Spotify list, the annotations all his:
Chet and Bernie Tribute – MikeF126, V1.
- “If You Were Mine,” Billie Holiday. Roy Eldridge on trumpet
- “Rock the Casbah”– Remastered.” The Clash
- “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” – Single [short] Version,” Iron Butterfly
- “Death Don’t Have No Mercy’” Rev. Gary Davis
- “The Sky Is Crying,” Elmore James
- “Sway-2009 Mix,” The Rolling Stones
- “It Hurts Me Too,” Elmore James, Chief Records version
- “Lonesome 77203,” Billy Don Burns
- “Done Somebody Wrong,” Elmore James
- “Can’t Cash My Checks.” Jamey Johnson
- “Sea of Heartbreak,” Jimmy Buffet/George Strait version
- “Metal Firecracker,” Lucinda Williams
- “Chain of Fools,” Aretha Franklin
- “Song for Chet,” Peter Abrahams, Mitch Watkins, Gene Elders, et al
- “Surfin’ USA,” The Beach Boys
- “Pontiac Blues – Live.” Sonny Boy Williamson and The Yardbirds
Enjoy!
Click below to pre-order your copy of A Farewell to Arfs, available August 6th, 2024!
Meet Chet, the lovable canine narrator who works alongside Bernie, a down-on-his-luck private investigator. Chet may have flunked out of police school, but he’s a detective, and he’s found his human in Bernie. Though Chet doesn’t fully understand Bernie, or the issues that distract him―like divorce, cash flow, and child custody―they remain a loyal, tightly-bonded pair through all the suspense and intrigue. Crime has never been so much fun.
When threats are made against a pampered show dog named Princess, who better to investigate than the PI duo of Chet & Bernie? What starts off as a lark of a case takes a serious turn when Princess and her owner are abducted, and gets even worse when Bernie’s on-again off-again girlfriend, reporter Susie Sanchez, disappears. When Chet is separated from Bernie, it’s up to the canine to put everything together and save the day.
When Bernie takes his elephant-crazy son Charlie to see the traveling circus, the ever-loyal Chet tags along. But by the time they get there the headlining elephant and her trainer have gone missing without a trace―not even a witness. How does an elephant disappear from the circus in the middle of the night? No, it’s not a riddle. It’s the mystery Chet & Bernie have to solve in the third installment of their delightful series.
As Bernie is invited to give the keynote speech at the Great Western Private Eye Convention, he and Chet are also hired to find a boy who’s gone missing from wilderness camp. The boy’s mother thinks his father―her ex―has snatched him, but Chet isn’t so sure. And things get more complicated when a stray puppy that looks suspiciously like Chet shows up. Affairs of the heart collide with the job, and Chet & Bernie depend on each other like they never have before.
Hollywood has really gone to the dogs. When bad-boy movie star Thad Perry is in town shooting a big-budget Western, Chet & Bernie have to keep him out of trouble. But Thad has a mysterious connection to the Valley, and the people who know his secrets keep turning up dead. But worst of all, Thad comes with a cat, and his feline friend Brando has taken an instant dislike to Chet.
As a favor to an old friend Frenchie Boutette, Chet & Bernie head to New Orleans to find Frenchie’s brother Ralph, a reclusive inventor who’s disappeared, along with his houseboat, from the bayou. What starts off looking like a family dispute over stolen shrimp leads to big oil, black ops figures, and a shadowy gang called the Q’s―plus Iko, a legendary bayou gator with a big appetite. It seems like the more Chet & Bernie find out about Ralph and what he knew, the less chance they have of surviving to do anything about it.
When Chet and Bernie are visiting Bernie’s girlfriend, Suzie Sanchez, a reporter living in Washington D.C., one of Suzie’s sources runs into trouble of the worst kind, and Bernie suddenly finds himself under arrest. As Chet befriends a powerful D.C. operative who may or may not have the goods on an ambitious politician, dog & PI are sucked into an international conspiracy, battling unfamiliar forces under the blinking red eyes of a strange bird that only Chet seems to notice.
Chet and Bernie return home to find their elderly neighbors are being investigated for possessing a cactus illegally transplanted from the desert. When Chet and Bernie go deep into the desert to investigate their cactus-smuggling neighbors they discover things far worse than plant trafficking. Everything is connected to a strange festival, a long-ago kidnapping that may not have been a kidnapping, and a charismatic criminal with a cult following―a criminal who immediately sees what Chet and Bernie mean to each other, and knows how to exploit it…