Night Dogs
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
The North Precinct of Portland, Oregon, is home to two kinds of cops: sergeants and lieutenants who've screwed up somewhere else, and patrol men who thrive on the action on the Avenue. Officer Hanson is the second kind, a veteran who has traded his bronze star for a badge. War is what Hanson knows, and in this battle for Portlands meanest streets, he's fighting not so much for the law as for his own code of justice. Hanson is a man who seems to fear nothing - except his own memories. And it is his past that could destroy him now: An enemy in the depart-ment is determined to bring him down by digging into his war record and resurrecting the darkest agonies of that nightmare time. And Hanson himself risks everything - his career, his equilibrium, even his life - when the only other survivor of his Special Forces unit comes back into his life. Doc Dawson is a drug dealer and a killer. . . but he's the one man Hanson can trust.
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.
