So He Takes the Dog
Jonathan Buckley Fourth Estate, 327pp, £10.99
ISBN 0007228309
Disgruntled after a row with his wife, Benjamin Kemp takes his dog for a walk on the beach, somewhere in southern England. He stumbles upon a rotting, waterlogged body wrapped in a bin liner: the victim of a fatal knife wound in the chest cavity. It falls on a local policeman and his colleague to piece together the history of the deceased, known locally as "Henry": a homeless eccentric with no discernible past. As the investigation progresses, a patchy image of his life starts to emerge. But each new piece of information seems to provide as many problems as it does clues.
Disguised as a detective story, the novel is really an exploration of the society in which the enigmatic Henry lived. Jonathan Buckley also puts the policeman-narrator's own life under the microscope as he examines the fears and desires of the people around him. It is a world full of quiet emotional tension.
Buckley is a talented verbal painter, with a fine eye for detail, but he overuses these skills. There are so many tangents, backstories, and digressions that the gripping quality of the first few chapters is lost. This is partly intentional: Buckley is evoking a series of impressions. But it is possible for a novel to offer both vivid observation and a compelling plot. A pity, then, to have one without the other.
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