Black Dog by
Stephen Booth
pbk out May 00
(HarperCollins)
at £9.99
I thought Black Dog was a Led Zeppelin track, but there you go... It's also, as Stephen Booth points out at the start of his extremely competent debut novel, a "melancholy" or "depression of spirits". As well as being a canine that's difficult to spot at night. Don't you just love a title with multiple layers of significance? Black Dog's publishers have highlighted it as an extraordinary novel from a major new talent. Justifiable hype or hostage to fortune? The answer lies somewhere in the middle. The set-up is hardly innovative. Teenager Laura Vernon goes missing, then is found dead by secretive pensioner Harry Dickinson. Laura's father Graham is a dodgy businessman, her mother Charlotte a boozer, her brother Daniel a lippy student. The usual suspects.
On the other side of the coin, the investigating officers have hang-ups that all readers of the genre will recognise: DC Ben Cooper is trying to live up to the example of his heroic father while DC Diane Fry, an outsider, has her own traumatic past to cope with. The Peak District setting, convincingly drawn and darkly atmospheric, is also a bit of a commonplace in contemporary British crime fiction. Think Val McDermid, think Reginald Hill - both HarperCollins authors, the latter giving Black Dog a generous plug.
So, is Black Dog a) formulaic police procedural or b) genuine achievement? I'll go for b) - with reservations. The characters are very well developed, even the minor ones being given a depth that's unusual. I'd single out Harry Dickinson and his mates for special praise - they make up an excellent trio of cussed, argumentative old codgers and they're also significant in terms of plot. And if the relationship between Cooper and Fry breaks no new ground, at least the author doesn't go for the easy way out at the end. The complex story lines are compelling too, though I really think a moratorium should be declared on dead female adolescents with unhealthy sex lives.
All in all, Black Dog is a notable debut which grips and moves in turn. I'm still not sure if Stephen Booth has been well served by his publishers. Not only have they built up reader expectations a lot more than is necessary, but they've allowed him to admit to the fact that he's well known as a breeder of Toggenburg goats in the author biography. I've seen some weird publicity angles, but that one takes several packets of biscuits.
Black Dog by
Stephen Booth