Night Dogs
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Acclaimed crime writer Kent Anderson's "fiercely authentic and deeply disturbing" police novel, following a Vietnam veteran turned cop on the meanest streets of 1970s Portland, Oregon (Los Angeles Times).
Two kinds of cops find their way to Portland's North Precinct: those who are sent there for punishment, and those who come for the action. Officer Hanson is the second kind, a veteran who survived the war in Vietnam only to decide he wanted to keep fighting at home. Hanson knows war, and in this battle for the Portland streets, he fights not for the law but for his own code of justice.
Yet Hanson can't outrun his memories of another, warmer battleground. A past he thought he'd left behind, that now threatens to overshadow his future. An enemy, this time close to home, is prying into his war record. Pulling down the shields that protect the darkest moments of that fevered time. Until another piece of his past surfaces, and Hanson risks his career, his sanity--even his life--for honor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's been a decade between novels for the talented Anderson, but he displays the same power, grace and maturity in fictionalizing his experiences as a Portland, Ore., policeman that he did in dealing with his stint in Vietnam in Sympathy for the Devil (1987). His hero, Hanson, returning from the earlier novel, is now a cynical, reclusive yet dedicated officer who hides his sensitivity to the tragedies taking place around him behind a glib demeanor. His seemingly casual approach to the job inspires a vindictive, by-the-book narcotics officer, Fox, to go digging into Hanson's war background, only to discover some confidential FBI files pertaining to Hanson's time with the Special Forces in Vietnam. This conflict forms a bridge between Anderson's two novels, allowing the author to compare the violence of the Vietnam War to that of the inner city. Subplots include the death of Hanson's partner at the hands of a vicious petty criminal, a romantic misadventure with a woman policeman and a destructive, kinky affair with a woman who has a fetish for violence. Recurring throughout are pregnantly symbolic images of the night dogs, rejected animals that roam the ghettos in packs and are stalked and killed during an annual police hunt. Anderson makes his mark in Wambaugh country with his eloquent, literary voice and an anguished, haunting sensibility. Many novels have been written about the lives of cops and soldiers, but few have probed the American propensity for violence as well as this one. In a foreword, James Crumley rightfully heralds this as "not just a fine book," but an "important" book.
