DOGGONE (Lexi O’Malley Series Book 1) by D. M. Buckley

Thirty-two-year-old Lexi O’Malley, a boring software programmer by trade, was out of work, out of money, full of attitude, and looking for a new career. When her eccentric Aunt Scarlet calls and shames her into helping search for Bubba, her missing, big, dopey, black Lab, she figures she might as well add out of luck to the mix since dog detective wasn’t exactly the great new profession she had in mind. In the process of tending to her familial obligation, she finds Bubba beaten nearly to death, and after Aunt Scarlet’s home is ransacked she accidentally learns her aunt’s handyman is not who he professes to be. While playing amateur sleuth, she’s shot at, pursued by thugs, crashes her car, finds her apartment burned to the ground, and discovers that even though she’s short on expertise and not all that brave, she’s a master fibber and can hold her own in a crisis.