John Shannon Solves the Case of the Overlooked Books
Posted by: Keir Graff
As part of our ongoing Mystery Month coverage, we’re asking authors who have been well reviewed by Booklist to recommend books by other writers that didn’t get the attention they deserved. Today, John Shannon, whose star-to-review ratio would be the envy of practically anybody (he’s 6 for 9), tells us why we should take another look at the work of Kent Anderson. (Shannon’s latest, by the way, is On the Nickel, which Bill Ott calls, “Another winner in an outstanding series.”) Here’s Shannon’s praise for his fellow writer:
One of the most convincing and most intense novels ever written on the day-to-day struggles of a policeman trying to do his job as an ethical and decent man, beset by enemies both inside and outside the police department — Kent Anderson’s overlooked Night Dogs. There’s never been another cop novel remotely like it. The novel is something of a sequel to Anderson’s Sympathy for the Devil, which was for my money the best and darkest novel to come out of Viet Nam. His writing is so powerful that it can win you over completely and then carry you down into hell.
May 5th, 2010 at 4:53 am
I simply love crime stories. But this one is the 1987 edition. Did you have anything after that?
May 5th, 2010 at 10:09 am
Dear Naresh,
Actually, “Night Dog” is 1996. Kent writes slowly and rewrites a lot. I believe he’s still hard at work on his third novel.
May 7th, 2010 at 11:45 am
[...] you’ve been reading Likely Stories at all this month, then you know we’ve had a terrific lineup of mystery writers sharing some of their favorite [...]