From Amazon.com:

While investigating a suicide, Dave Brandstetter discovers a dead reporter’s final scoop

Adam Streeter has covered international crises from Siberia to Cambodia. When disaster strikes, he grabs his battered typewriter and hops on a plane, hurling himself into danger wherever the story demands. He is brave, talented, and internationally renown—so why would he turn a pistol on himself?

Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter has seen enough suicides to know that a journalist this successful would never take his own life. Suspecting treachery, he digs into Adam’s last story—an unpublished investigation into the whereabouts of a vanished South American strongman, called El Carnicero,the Butcher—and Adam’s death shows every hallmark of his bloody style. To finish Adam’s investigation, Dave will have to make like a war correspondent and leap into the line of fire.

The Little Dog Laughed is book eight in the Dave Brandstetter Mystery series, which also includes Troublemaker and The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of.