So He Takes the Dog [Paperback]

A man out with his dog finds a body on a beach in a quiet seaside town. From this unpromising opening there unravels a superb crime novel from a British writer I have not come across before. The book has a distinct and original tone of quiet authenticity and rich human interest. Not for this writer the showy theatrics of contentious police procedural - instead it feels eminently crafted as a realistic novel, with a number of mysteries intertwined.

No one really knew Henry, except as an eccentric part of the scenery - a beach bum, a man old before his time, but Hannah, a local painter, thought he was a mystic, while others thought he was mentally ill. Now he's been stabbed to death and the police must try to trace his background so that they can find a motive. But this is also a story of the relationships of policemen to their families as well as their jobs and as such it has larger ambitions and greater insight than a straightforward crime novel. The characterisation is first class, devoid of the usual clichés with writing that has a great deal of depth and feeling. The plot has cliff-hanger elements but is refreshingly multi-faceted. The frustrations of the policeman's job are not always given their due in crime-writing, but here we are offered more insight into the ambiguities that can beset the crime-solver. If you want more than just the usual scenario, Buckley has it in spades.

This is not a story about murder or supersleuthing, but a far greater investigation, a contemplation of existence and its complex destinations.

And that is why, with so much to "get" under the text of this novel, there may not be agreement about the effect. Readers in naked search of defined plot, exposition, denouement and explicit resolution may be frustrated, while those who relish a rich, witty, forensic meditation of the elusive human as cultured subject will possibly remain disturbed long after completing the read.

But, the brilliance of this novel is that like the very best literature, or art, or music, it can and should be appreciated at its most scant or profound.

The lumpen marriage of retirees Benjamin and Christine Kemp is the opening sequence: "they have each other now all day long. Just each other, all day, every day. It's too much, it's not enough". Midst tetchy argument, Benjamin decides to go for a walk to his wife's rhetorical parting shot "what about that blasted dog",

"So he takes the dog, a decision which is really going to knock a divot out of his day".

And that is how the murdered, decomposing body of Henry, known in the village as an eccentric but harmless vagrant, is discovered at the outset by the dog.

The investigation to find out who Henry was reveals that as Henry wandered so did his identity, and a momentum to re-unite all the Henrys under one discrete body gives breadth to conceptual questions, and the opportunity for subtly refined examinations of states such as "you" and "I", trust and suspicion, loyalty and infidelity, transience and rigidity, wandering and dwelling.

Indeed, the book wanders in and out of resident's houses and these are so beautifully observed that frequently I believed that I was an eye-witness, a peeping Tom. And what can be seen is that the peculiar conditions and causes leading to Henry's vagrancy, are tangled with peculiarities of the lives in fixed abode. "It's only when you get into their houses that you see what lies behind day-to-day normalness", says a detective.

The narrator is the investigating police officer, John Donohue. There is something eery about his position in the book, the perspective is almost like an inversion of the traditional painters-eye-view peering out of the self-portrait. In this case, it feels as though as he layers image upon image, he paints over himself. It took me sometime to realise that the peculiarity of the narration was his refusal to refer to himself in the first person other than in dialogue. As one review says, "in the hands of a less talented writer this may appear to be trickery or device", but here this physical dousing, renders a startling perspective.

Perhaps the reason for telling the story is a commentary on perspective and observation? Though both narrator and author are simultaneously talented storytellers, I wondered how the narrative could be both believable and immediate, given that it is a forensically thorough account of a period that had begun ten years or so before. And at times I couldn't be certain that the humour, cynicism and far-reaching knowledge of art, theology, philosophy etc belonged to the narrator or the author. But that could be shame on me for having an image of the kind of knowledge an ex-loss adjustor turned policeman may have.

The observation is microscopic and seemingly uncapturable moments, expressions, smells, sounds, emotions are made acutely visual and securely tangible. And this I think is the power of conveying a sense that one is actually there. The glimpses are made explicit in a way that fools the reader into believing that they too would have noticed and interpreted a fraction of an expression in the same way. An old man who "slowly finds a match for our faces [the detectives] in the scrambled card index of his mind greets us with a squint, as if we were approaching him from a mile off". Or the narrator recounting an intimate memory of his "perfectly, untouchably beautiful" wife "...she has a modesty, a gorgeous modesty and self possession, as if she were not naked but wearing clothes too fine to be seen." A bird makes a call like the "squeaking of wet thin rubber, like balloons being tied", and a fraction of an expression is noted, "a movement of an eyelid... that seems to say something new, but it's gone so quickly it's impossible to be certain it was there".

These depictions of human expression, memory and physical landscape are richly observed and densely packed in. The author with skilful understatement manages to pose some big questions and beautifully resists providing any reflective judgements but invites meditation. The questions are more classical than you would expect to find in a "detective novel" and cultural, philosophical, theological references are in abundance. Moral luck for example is played out both in the exposition of Henry and how he came to be (rather than how he came to end), and concurrently in the narrators own life and relationships.

I think the Observer reviewer (quoted above) who considers Buckley to be a contemporary Orwell is slightly out in this regard. There seems not the polemic of Orwell's big ideas, rather minute exploration of fractional ones making the effect more diffuse, perhaps more akin to Chekhovian grace. So, as the previous reviewer notes, when the narration appears convoluted or there is a confusing change in tone or pace I am convinced that the architect is too precise and poetic for this to be without good reason. And thus, any apparent skewing should simply inspire deeper ponder. This is beautiful, disturbing writing.

I agree with Phillip Edwards who suggests that were this novel to appear on the Manbooker longlist (it didn't), it would have been a strong contender for the prize.

http://manbookerprize.blogspot.com/2006/08/so-who-takes-on-dog.html

This is a detective story with a difference. Not a 'Who-dunnit', 'why-dunnit', or even a 'how-dunnit' the narrative of the Investigating Police Officer leads the reader through the stages of searching for the true identity of the victim: a 'who-was-it-done-to'!

The opening chapter sets the scene for the entrance of the narrator-detective with the discovery of a decomposing body on the beach of a (nameless) southern English coastal town. Although written in a different way from subsequent chapters, it still hints strongly at what the reader should expect throughout the rest of the book - keen observation of human nature and the emotional benefit and cost of relationships.

From here on the narrator leads the way through the phases of investigation, intermingled with details and recollections of his own life and experiences with his colleagues, wife and son. Starting with interviews about recent local sightings and working backwards, the detectives pull together a less than complete history spanning a number of decades. The more detailed of the findings allude to times and places that may have played a part in shaping the victim 'Henry' into the homeless eccentric he was known as at the time of his death. There are some sections where the narrative becomes convoluted, but this could easily be a ploy on the part of the author to demonstrate the many levels that human minds, and souls can work on.

Forget ubiquitous 'Crime Thrillers' with their gadgets, gambits and page-turning plot twists, what makes this book interesting and compelling is the way that people, meetings, conversations and even interrogations (not all of which relate to the central plot) are observed and described in such a way that they feel very real.