Bondi, 1947. While Dot Campbell is called away, her Australian Terrier Blue is handed off a day at a time to every corner of the town: the vet surgery, the library, the surf club, the ballet school, the Pavilion, the Royal Easter Show, the Campbell Parade tram. Each short is one day, told from Blue's side of the lead, in the smells humans miss, the small wrongs nobody has clocked, and the patient work of making an oblivious person look.
These are heartwarming animal stories, not murder mysteries. No corpse, no villainy a good dog can't set right by teatime, for readers of Spencer Quinn and W. Bruce Cameron. If you know the Bondi books, each novelette calls in on a familiar series; if you don't, Blue makes a fine introduction. The whole run is free for newsletter subscribers.
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Book 1
Blue at the Wagging Tail
Forty years of antiseptic, kibble and sea-damp: a building that knows what it is. Out on the morning round, behind five leads in one hand, one gate gives off a kitchen stillness that should not be there.
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Book 2
Blue and the Librarian
Dogs who come into this room do not bark. Blue learns that in the first three seconds. Then a book turns up on the wrong shelf, and the restricted cabinet's brass handle carries hair-oil that has no business there.
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Book 3
Blue at the Surf Club
Handed over at the surf-club gate to a man who crouches all the way down. Then the salt changes, something colder rising near the third buoy, and the watch-chair is looking at the sand.
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Book 4
Blue and the Ballet School
Twelve girls at the barre, a red setter who cannot sit still, and a chip-shop smell coming up through the floor. Past the storage-room door, a filing cabinet is wrong, and nobody who sweeps past it knows.
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Book 5
Blue at the Pavilion
Wednesday, two brown pots of tea, four women and a book already argued over. Out on the verandah a man leans on the rail without looking in, and Nell has not touched her biscuit.
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Book 6
Blue and the Codebreaker
Someone else's tobacco on Dru Mercer's sleeve. A grey cat holding the only good chair. And a man who walks past the front window at the same hour on the wrong day, glancing up at the number.
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Book 7
Blue and the Christmas Hamper
December heat, cicadas, and a hamper wrapped, labelled and carried down to the post office. The woman at the sorting bench is not Vera, and she is checking every address against a list pinned up beside her.
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Book 8
Blue at the Easter Show
A loudspeaker that will not stop, dust the colour of weak tea, and a border collie working three ewes better than Blue has ever seen it done. Then the trials break, and the showground opens up.
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Book 9
Blue and the Tram
Five days in the care of a woman still learning where Bondi keeps things, and a tram route known by heart. Then a case sits between a passenger's feet, and its owner's own smell starts to turn.
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Book 10
Blue Nudges a Romance
The woman holding his lead this afternoon smells of soap, her sister's biscuits, and a tiredness she has been carrying politely for years. A schoolteacher walks the same circuit every Sunday. Her bench faces the wrong way.
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Book 11
Blue Saves the Carnival
Campbell Parade closed to the trams, bunting overhead, the chip fryer silent. At the foot of the bandstand, one tin holds the afternoon's takings, and one man stands nearer to it than anybody buying a scone.
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Book 12
Blue Comes Home
The gate, the flagstones, the door opening before he reaches it. Dot is home. But her coat stays on, the tea goes cold beside her, and the letter she sits down to write will not start.
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