Sleeping Dog, by Dick Lochte
I picked this up as a bit of a wildcard choice in the library. I wanted something that was different from the last few things I'd read, and I wanted a bit of fun. Dick Lochte's Sleeping Dog, an American crime novel selling itself as 'sheer undiluted entertainment', seemed to fit that bill - so I thought I'd try my luck. As I read it, I discovered that I had somewhat underestimated it. This review details why!
The central premise of Sleeping Dog is an unlikely duo teaming up to find a lost pet. Serendipity Dahlquist is a fourteen-year-old girl. She is eccentric, headstrong and very bright, and she has lost her dog. Leo Bloodworth is a middle-aged freelance detective, tired and bored and not a fan of children, and of course, he gets roped in. Now this seemed a pretty standard set-up for a crime novel. We had an ostensibly straightforward crime - a dog theft - which would likely become more complex as it was investigated. And we had the classic trope of the unlikely partnership - two people thrown together in surprising circumstances who would undoubtedly prove very useful to one another, and would almost certainly grow to like each other.
Were my predictions accurate? Partly: the plot did indeed thicken well beyond the loss of Serendipity's pet. From this small domestic entry point Lochte spun a delightfully complicated web of interlocked crimes linked to some corrupt celebrities and the Mexican mafia. It was replete with intricate backstories, surprising plot twists, and just the right amount of life-threatening danger. All great stuff. What I hadn't sussed to begin with was that Lochte's use of character was just as subtle and complex as his use of plot. The unlikely pairing of Serendipity and Bloodworth might have seemed a bit cliché, but they were more refined than the stock characters I thought they were, and Lochte had written them in a really clever and very amusing way.
We've all read books with alternating perspective. It's especially common, I've found, in crime and mystery novels. Sleeping Dog was one of these, each chapter switching between the two narrators. But Lochte had his own quite entertaining spin on it: Serendipity and Bloodworth find each other really annoying. He thinks of her as a precocious and irritating limpet, and she thinks he is useless. (Neither would like to admit that they are quite endeared to each other). The book is put together as though each character had written their own complete version of events without consulting the other, and had only later realised that the two accounts would have to be collapsed into one in order to be published. Both Serendipity and Bloodworth wish that they were the only one doing the telling, so the joint narration is rather more sparring than collaborative. This is used to fantastic comedic effect, especially when scenes at which both characters are present are retold from the other perspective. It's even funnier because Serendipity is often the more competent detective of the two.
Serendipity and Bloodworth's playful resentment of one another also came through in the tone. Bloodworth's sections in particular had a wry cynicism that was often very funny, and Serendipity's narration was pin-sharp, hilariously seeing through many of Bloodworth's facades despite her childish naivety. Common to both was Lochte's dry wit: Lochte was a columnist before he was a novelist, and for me this journalistic voice really came through in his sardonic humour. I was particularly struck by his consistently outrageous similes. Among his amusing comparisons were a gaffer 'as tough as a hard-boiled owl', a runner 'with a disposition like a chafed bear', and a neck 'as stiff as a grape presser's sock'. The language raised a chuckle every time.
The final thing I appreciated about Sleeping Dog was the title, which didn't make much sense until I'd read the whole book. The dog in question is of course a real dog, Serendipity's dog. There are lots of other real dogs too who are stolen, transported and literally put to sleep at various points by the criminals. But it's also the sleeping dog of idiom: near the end, when Serendipity and Bloodworth have uncovered a good deal more scandal than they were bargaining for, they discuss the possibility of stopping their meddling and hiding the full truth from the public eye - letting sleeping dogs lie. Sleeping Dog, then, is a surface story about a lost dog, which also teems with a thrilling underbelly of hidden secrets and extra layers - and that doubleness of juicy complexity smuggled beneath ostensible simplicity is contained in the title. Very clever.
Overall, this had sparky characters, witty prose and a clever story, with much more to it than met the eye in every aspect. I enjoyed it.