I finished list-member Dick Lochte's "Sleeping Dog". I have a
few observations/questions. No spoilers, don't worry. 1: This
is a remarkably polished novel. A mystery/thriller/PI novel
full of wit and tenderness and, er, murder, and, oh yeah,
dogs tearing each other to pieces. The fact that it's a first
novel just makes it even more remarkable. 2: Following on
from 1. Given the alternating first person narration (the
story is told from two viewpoints, that of Serendipity, a
precocious 14-year-old girl, and Leo Bloodworth, a hardboiled
PI), how does the author manage to establish the current
point of view so immediately without resorting to using the
characters' names as headers? 3: Leading from 2. Off the top
of my head, the only other book I've read that uses two first
person narrators is "1977" by David Peace. Also a
tremendously effective novel. Why is this technique not used
more widely? Is it because most writers don't have the
necessary skill, or is it because the technique is generally
considered unlikely to work? Crais's "LA Requiem" and Coben's
"Tell No One" both use a first person/third person pairing
that requires more than a little suspension of disbelief and
"LA Requiem", particularly, would have been much more
hard-hitting if the Pike sections had been written from his
point of view. 4: If Jim hadn't pointed out the Wizard of Oz
parallels at the start of this month, it would have probably
passed over my head. Missing mutt starts the ball rolling.
Leo = the Lion. Rock City = Emerald City. Too subtle for me!
5: Without wishing to provoke further debate on the
definition of hardboiled, it's interesting nonetheless to
speculate that using Jim's definition, the parts written from
Serendipity's POV are not hardboiled (she has an extensive
vocabulary and comes from a priveleged background), whereas
Bloodworth's POV sections are. This makes "Sleeping Dog"
par-hardboiled. 6: I can see why Mark said he wanted to read
it again. Me, too. After I've read "Laughing Dog".
Al Guthrie
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