Spencer Quinn is the author of the best-selling "Chet and Bernie Mystery series. How did he come to write it? "My wife said, How about doing something with dogs? The basic building blocks came to me right there at the kitchen table: two detective pals; narration by the four-legged one; and all in the first person, which I'd never tried before in a novel. Plus the most important thing - Chet would not be a talking dog (or be undoggy in any way) but would be a narrating dog. Anything that thinks and has memory must have a narrative going on inside. I went to the office - over the garage, commuting distance fifteen feet - and wrote the first page. Then I wanted to know what happened next."
Two books got him riled up recently. But we'll let him explain it to you:
"I've read lots of book this year, most of them 'better' than Life, the Keith Richards autobiography, and Frank:The Voice, James Kaplan's 
biography of Frank Sinatra, but those two, consumed sequentially, seem to have gotten me thinking, mostly in an uneasy way. Specifically, how much slack in their non-working lives are we willing to grant to artists who, if not geniuses, at least reached the tops of their fields? Keef and Frankie were both solipsistic monsters but made great and innovative music, and music soothes the savage breast, although it didn't appear to soothe their savage breasts. So therefore? I have no idea. But books get the mind working in a way I've always found irresistible. In short, I recommend Life and Frank:The Voice."
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