A Slepyng Hound to Wake
a novel
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Praise for Hound:
"There's something charismatic and timeless about the way the story builds and McCaffrey opens Henry's life to the reader . . . McCaffrey is. . .just telling a compelling, old-school yarn, the kind of story a man who knows his literature tells."—Time Out Chicago
"For the true bibliophile, this is a book you'll love."—The Hippo
Geoffrey Chaucer said, "It is nought good a slepyng hound to wake." Henry Sullivan, bookhound, is ready to be that sleeping dog: to settle down in his new apartment and enjoy life with his new girlfriend.
But the underside of the literary world won't let him go. A bookscout sells Henry a book—and is murdered later that night. An old friend asks him to investigate a case of possible plagiarism involving a local best-selling author. To make matters worse, his violinist neighbor seems to have a stalker. And wherever Henry goes, there's a cop watching him.
Henry can read the signs: to save those he loves he has to save himself.
Vincent McCaffrey's novel Hound was chosen as a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. He has owned the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop for more than thirty years. He has been paid to do lawn work, shovel snow, paint houses, and to be an office-boy, warehouse grunt, dishwasher, waiter, and hotel night clerk. He has chosen at various times to be a writer, editor, publisher, and bookseller. A Slepyng Hound to Wake is his second novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In McCaffrey's compelling second mystery to feature Boston book dealer Henry Sullivan (after 2009's Hound), Henry is unsettled by the murder of a fellow "book hound" down on his luck, Eddy Perry, who just sold Henry a rare volume of Lovecraft horror stories. Later, former girlfriend Barbara Krause, the owner of Alcott & Poe, an independent bookstore, asks Henry's help in investigating a plagiarism case. Sharon Greene, one of Barbara's employees, has accused a local literary heavyweight, George Duggan, of stealing from the work of the late James Frankowski, a little-known writer with whom Sharon lived for years. Meanwhile, Barbara struggles to keep Alcott & Poe afloat in an era of recession and e-commerce. A longtime bookstore owner himself, McCaffrey places less emphasis on crime solving than on the larger question of the printed word's place in today's world. Evocative prose and characterizations will remind many of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels.
