Mon 19 Oct 2009
by Marvin Lachman
DICK LOCHTE – Sleeping Dog. Arbor House, hardcover, 1985. Paperback reprints: Warner, 1986; Poisoned Pen Press, trade pb, 2001.
Dick Lochte’s Sleeping Dog, recently reprinted by Warner, features Serendipity Dahlquist and Leo G. Bloodworth, “a spunky little miss and case-hardened private shamus.”
Serendipity is only fourteen, a 1980’s version of Holden Caulfield. When she and Leo find a corpse, she is blase, not queasy, saying, “I’ve seen dead people before, tons of ’em. On TV.”
This unlikely team works together in a wild, fast-moving mystery about such unlikely subjects as dog-fighting and television. The Southern California scene, used so often in the past, has seldom been better portrayed, with an especially devastating picture of the ocean town, Playa del Rey.
Equally good is Lochte’s picture of Bloodworth’s car: “It had dark tinted windows, the better to hide behind. Its back seat was covered with jackets, sweaters, strange hats, brown paper bags, squashed into balls, Big Mac wrappers, greasy fried chicken boxes, and empty beer cans. It was the car of a dedicated, working gumshoe.”
[UPDATE] 10-19-09. Sleeping Dog won the Nero Wolfe Award and was nominated for an Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Award when it came out in 1985. The only other novel-length appearance of this delightfully mismatched pair of detectives was Laughing Dog (Arbor House, 1988).
October 19th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
This one was named one of the 100 Best Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers and Lochte was a long time mystery reviewer for the L.A. Times. He’s also co-written one book with Today Show weatherman Al Roker, The Morning Show Murders.
Love the description of the back seat of Bloodworth’s car. Brings back my days with Pinkertons save for the beer cans. But he left out the empty two liter bottles for when you got caught short on surveilence. Too much information I suppose.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
I remember reading this when it first came out in paperback and being quite impressed. Time to read it again I think. I believe Lochte also wrote a stand-alone set in New Orleans involving an N.O. cop and the local mob.
And David, I also worked for a detective agency: The John Lynch Company is downtown L.A. for almost four years in the 1980s as “Assistant General Counsel and Supervising Investigator”.
Those somewhat gaudy titles just meant I was a member of the CA Bar and the titles were cheaper than paying me enough… 😉
My car(s) looked like an AA version of Bloodworth’s car that whole decade. But only because I was–and still am–a slob. Hell, books and newspapers still carpet my back seat area. I ALWAYS need to have something on hand to read.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:21 am
Rick
Well. granted my back seat is still a mess, but nothing like the mobile closet crossed with a Stop-N-Go from the Pinkerton days.
The memories aren’t bad, but it’s hard to recall the thrill of going undercover as a draftsman or sitting in your car through either below zero or plus 100 weather while following some poor slob (and in Texas the freezing and burning up could be on the same day).
I think my title was Guy Who Does Whatever Comes Up. Actually I was a Counter-Intelligence Specialist in Industrial Counter Espionage. Which sounds much better than anything reflected in my paycheck.
But that messy back seat brings up memories.