REVIEW  
Philip Reed - Bird Dog Hodder £16.99  
Harold Dodge was a bird dog, a runner for a shady car dealer, one who seeks out suckers and sends them to the dealer to be fleeced, as Detective Gammon puts it. Harold knows al1 about cars, has even written a book, How to Buy a Cream Puff, and it is this knowledge which involves him in all sorts of trouble. His weakness was always women and cars, in that order, and when a beautiful woman seeks his help to "unwind a deal", that is to take back her old car, an Escort, in exchange for the new car she doesn't like, a Marianna, he is unable to refuse. Complications ensue when the woman, Marianne, decides to unwind the deal herself, without telling Harold. She exchanges the Matsura for the Escort and unwittingly drives off with a brief case that has been left in the car by the shady dealer. The brief case contains a little black book which records all the dealership's under-the-counter profits. The dealer, Joe Govo, once Harold's employer, is furious. He doesn't want the book "floating around".
The dealer's minion, Vito, eventually catches up with her and rapes her end the cars change hands. yet again, It could from this point have become even more confusing what with the misunderstandings and mistaken identities and Harold and Marianna being buffeted this way and that, as if in a fog, but Philip Reed keeps a tight rein on his picaresque plot and guides us skilfully through mayhem and murder and the disposal of a dead body. Poor Harold is caught up in the thick of the action and it is touch and go whether he will elude the determined efforts of Detective Gammon, while Marianna is shot and seriously wounded.
Bird Dog Is an accomplished first novel, Philip Reed switches his point of view deftly from character to character and so raises the tension right to the end, He writes very well and gives a convincing picture of the darker side of Los Angeles, A most entertaining read.
JOHN BOYLES