Mad Dogs by Brian Hodge - A Book Review
It’s been a while since I had the pleasure of reading a novel by author Brian Hodge, but I can happily say I’ve broken that dry spell at last. MAD DOGS, released in a signed and limited edition from Cemetery Dance Publications, is a whirlwind crime novel that takes a sort of backwards approach to most books of its ty
pe. In most crime novels, you get a complex mystery, and you slowly wind your way from the clues to the conclusion. In MAD DOGS the author takes a simple setting, an innocent event, and through a series of miscommunications, crazy characters, twists of fate and Machiavellian machinations, escalates the complexity and insanity of the plot as it develops.
I had to laugh when I realized how the initial mishap developed. In fact, I’m going to provide you with a free short story of mine linked from here to show you WHY I laughed. On his way to his own wedding, Jamey Sheppard stops to get gas near Flagstaff, Arizona. While there, he encounters a counter boy who recognizes him from a Mountain
Dew commercial, and a red-necked sheriff who also recognizes him. Except, the sheriff has him mixed up with the character he played on a re-enactment show similar to “America’s Most Wanted.” In the act of trying to apprehend his man, said sheriff manages to shoot himself with his own dropped gun, and the novel is off and running.
DNW
