BROOKLINE, Mass. (WHDH) -- A famous author and his friends stepped up the search for his pet Beagle named Tessa.

Suspense and thriller author Dennis Lehane has penned books including Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island and Mystic River. Tessa, his family’s beloved dog, went she escaped from her family’s home on Christmas Eve.

Tessa was last spotted in an Allston parking lot shortly after her escape.

“She just walked into our lives and took over,” Lehane told 7News on Thursday. “She’s nothing but sweet and I think that’s one of the reasons people get into this kind of thing. People get a little obsessed about missing pets because you can say a lot of things about various human beings, but sometimes you find a dog or a cat or a lizard that’s unequivocally good, and that was this dog. She’s just an unequivocally sweet, sweet dog.”

Lehane and several volunteers went out Thursday to put up posters throughout the area hoping to find her. Lehane hopes Tessa was picked up by someone who just doesn’t know she has a home.

The author said not only is there a cash reward, but whoever finds Tessa will be a character in his next book.

“I can promise it won’t be just a walk-on part. I would never do that. Somebody that was good enough to return this dog and wanted their name in the book, then I would make them -- I would give them some lines, I’d have them do something. I can’t say whether they’d be a hero or a villain, but they’d be noticeable,” said Lehane.

Lehane thinks that because Tessa was spotted in the Allston parking lot shortly after her escape that someone might have picked her up thinking she was a stray, not a lost dog.