Hound by Vincent McCaffrey
My rating: 3/5 cats
this is not a great mystery novel, but it is a good read. there are actually a couple of mysteries contained within this small novel, but it is really the story of a man who loves books. the author is himself a bookhound, so naturally he knows his stuff and has an excellent vantage point from which to write this character. people who love books are going to love this book, because his excitement in both reading and hunting them is contagious. mystery novel fans may feel a bit underwhelmed.
the strongest parts are definitely the passages about the book trade. when he is talking about his early years in the book business—the drive he had, his methods for obtaining and assessing books, right down to the mechanics of building the shelving units for maximum salability and display space, and also when he later talks about appraising collections of books—there is a passion that comes through in the writing that is absent from other scenes.
i would love this author to write a book-memoir, like larry mcmurtry has done about his years in the book trade, because these are the kinds of stories that excite me—more than murder, more than brutality, i like to know about where to find good used books!
the rest of the book has its awkward moments—rants on the flaws of the modern age, annoyingly unsophisticated philosophical arguments that remind me of stoned friends in undergrad, details that are given as afterthoughts when they should probably be given more emphasis, weak transitions. but when he is writing about books, this story shines; the parts that are good are very very good:
It was here he had first understood the true smell of books. The peculiar odor of a few pages held open to his nose was already a perfume he had savored. Here, it was the sum of the scent of a million books which once flowed and ebbed on the tide of human inquiry—the aroma mixed with the smell of polished wood, cooled and condensed against the marble floors, arising again around the electric glow of milky orbs in brass bowls, drifting about the green-shaded lights at the tables, and stirred by the brush of wool on the arms of readers lost in a greed for words.
the secondary mystery is the stronger of the two; the main mystery is fairly pedestrian and any of the character development that involves family or love instead of the passion for books is oddly stilted and not very interesting. but it is definitely worth a read for the booky bits, and the resolution of the secondary mystery.
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