The Printed Page

Title: The Dog Park Club
Author/website: Cynthia Robinson
Publisher: Minotaur
Publication date & page count: June ’10 & 295 pages

From page 149 of The Dog Park Club

“But we are,” Wolfy said. “We are there.”
Everyone in the room became still at these three words. We are there. The crystalline truth of it resonated in a pure, clear pitch. Everyone turned to slowly look at Wolf. They regarded the slender, soft-spoken man – the foreign man – with his careful words.
“We are here, Wolfman,” Ed said. “And whoever took Amy didn’t figure on us.”

Max Bravo, a wise-cracking gay opera singer, and his best friend, advertising whiz Claudia Fantini, who’s heartbroken that her husband wants a divorce, find solace taking the husband’s dog, Asta, to a Berkeley, Calif., dog park. There Claudia and Max hang out with a variety of fellow dog lovers, including a hoary-headed Vietnam vet, a sartorially offensive software engineer from Barcelona, and bank loan officer Amy Carter, who’s pregnant. After the popular Amy vanishes and the police fail to find her, Max and company, including Max’s visiting German boyfriend, investigate, staking out Amy’s house because they suspect her husband has killed her.