Why am I passionate about this?
I’m the author of the Peter Pike private eye series. Pike is a beat-up Middle Eastern veteran-turned private eye who finds himself embroiled in mysteries, usually with lost treasure involved: in the huge, sophisticated Indian civilizations that were here before us; in Lincoln’s murky sexuality; in a lost Faberge egg and the downfall of the Romanovs; and with Peter Pike and the Silver Shepherd, some rather nasty (and one nice) Nazi war dogs.
Neal's book list on wild and weird books on dogs
Why did Neal love this book?
You want heartwarming books about man’s best friend? You’ve come to the wrong place. Novels with dogs don’t have to be heart-warming. They can be quite strange, sinister or both.
Here’s a prime example: The Dogs of Babel, which starts as the heartbroken narrator discovers his artsy, Goth wife has fallen from a tree and died. There are plenty of clues that this was not an accident. But there are no witnesses, except for poor Lorelei the dog. What starts out as a heartbreaking account of grief then takes a sharp turn into the bizarre as the narrator tries to teach Lorelei to speak so he can reconstruct his wife’s last hours. It descends into a seething underground, complete with people operating on dogs’ vocal chords to make them speak. Have I mentioned my list isn’t heartwarming? Did I swipe elements of this novel for my book? You bet…
2 authors picked The Dogs of Babel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Discovering clues that indicate his beloved wife may not have died accidentally, Paul Iverson begins a perilous search for the truth while attempting to teach his dog, who witnessed the crime, to communicate.