Metzger’s Dog: A Novel by Thomas Perry (Epub)

Description

The much-loved comic thriller by the author of the Edgar Award–winning The Butcher’s Boy is now, by popular demand, back in print, featuring a new Introduction by bestselling author Carl Hiaasen.

When Leroy “Chinese” Gordon breaks into a professor’s lab at the University of Los Angeles, he’s after some pharmaceutical cocaine, worth plenty of money. Instead, he finds the papers the professor has compiled for the CIA, which include a blueprint for throwing a large city into chaos. But how is the CIA to be persuaded to pay a suitable ransom, unless of course someone actually uses the plan to throw a large city into chaos—Los Angeles, for instance? Assigned to cope with the crisis and restore the peace, veteran agent Ben Porterfield steps onto the scene to remind us that the CIA’s middle name is, after all, Intelligence. Enlivening the mix are Gordon’s beautiful girlfriend, Margaret, his temperamental cat, Dr. Henry Metzger, and Metzger’s friend, an enormous half-wild dog with huge teeth.

User’s Reviews

Review “Very sharp, very funny . . . should not be missed.”—The New York Times Book Review “[Thomas Perry is] a master of nail-biting suspense.”—Los Angeles Times“In a word—wonderful!”—Chicago Tribune“I read Metzger’s Dog at one sitting, taking my time and savoring every word, and there was not a moment when I’d have rather been doing something else.”—Lawrence Block“This is the funniest novel you’re likely to read all season, and one of the best.”—The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionFrom the Trade Paperback edition. From the Inside Flap The much-loved comic thriller by the author of the Edgar Award-winning “The Butcher’s Boy is now, by popular demand, back in print, featuring a new Introduction by bestselling author Carl Hiaasen. When Leroy “Chinese” Gordon breaks into a professor’s lab at the University of Los Angeles, he’s after some pharmaceutical cocaine, worth plenty of money. Instead, he finds the papers the professor has compiled for the CIA, which include a blueprint for throwing a large city into chaos. But how is the CIA to be persuaded to pay a suitable ransom, unless of course someone actually uses the plan to throw a large city into chaos–Los Angeles, for instance? Assigned to cope with the crisis and restore the peace, veteran agent Ben Porterfield steps onto the scene to remind us that the CIA’s middle name is, after all, Intelligence. Enlivening the mix are Gordon’s beautiful girlfriend, Margaret, his temperamental cat, Dr. Henry Metzger, and Metzger’s friend, an enormous half-wild dog with huge teeth. –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Leroy Chinese Gordon (Wonderful name!) is a bit of an idiot savant, minor criminal, tool and die guy who lives in Los Angeles. He has lovingly hand-built his own anti-aircraft gun and mounted it in the back of his Ford van. He has two close friends who have particular skills (lockpicking and sharpshooting) and who comprise his “gang.” He has a beautiful (Of course!) and smart (Surprisingly!) girlfriend named Margaret. Chinese himself is ruled by his roommate, Dr. Henry Metzger, a cat.Chinese learns of experiments with cocaine that are being done by the University of Los Angeles. The University has a large store of the white stuff and Chinese makes a plan to steal it.He and his cohorts are successful in grabbing the cocaine, but while they are on site, Chinese overhears a professor talking to a visitor about something very valuable that is in his office. He doesn’t exactly say what this “something” is, but Chinese is intrigued. He decides to go rogue. He breaks into the professor’s office and takes a locked box which is the only thing there that looks like it could possibly be valuable.When the box is opened later, it is found to contain only papers. But what papers!That professor had been conducting field experiments in psychological warfare for the CIA, no less. The papers in the box were his detailed reports of his findings and, essentially, contained instructions on how to wage psywar and how to bring a city to its knees. These are papers that the CIA will want back very badly.After their caper at the university, the Gordon gang drives to a junkyard while attempting to evade the authorities. At the junkyard, through a series of events too complicated to explain here, they meet the iconic junkyard dog, a huge, black brute that does his best to devour them, and they kidnap him. Problem is no one can control the dog. That is until they get him home and he meets Dr. John Metzger. The cat takes charge of the dog. Thus, Metzger’s Dog.This is my first experience in reading a Thomas Perry novel. This particular book was first published in 1983, but was reissued in the early 2000s with a foreward by Carl Hiaasen. I read the Kindle edition which included the foreward, and, a few sentences in, Hiaasen had me laughing out loud. I thought if the book maintained the same level of humor I was in for a real treat. I was not disappointed.The book is full of nutty characters, including many in the CIA. It is wonderfully creative and manages, in addition to the humor, to convey some clever insights into people and bureaucracies and the way they work. It is a real comic tour de force.Most of the book has Gordon, along with his partners in crime and his girlfriend, trying to find a way to convince the CIA to turn over five million dollars in ransom in return for the papers. The CIA, unfortunately, is led by a couple of dolts, who are convinced that they are dealing with some foreign terrorist organization, and they keep trying to take that organization out while failing to deliver the money. The toll of dead bodies mounts – mostly bad guys, I should note, and none of them the actual culprits.There is a cadre of old hands at the CIA who realize what is going on and that their leaders are screwing things up. They decide to take matters into their own hands.The stunts that the gang pull along the way kept me smiling and chuckling. I wouldn’t say the book is laugh-out-loud-Dave-Barry funny, but it is amusing. The writing is subtle. The banter between characters is sharp. All in all, it was a fun read and a nice introduction to the work of Thomas Perry. I think I’ll be visiting him again.

⭐ Great black comedy that I wish I’d discovered years ago (it was published in 1993). Anti-hero Chinese Gordon matches wits with a dysfunctional CIA and nearly destroys Los Angeles in the process. Gordon is aided and abetted by a genius girlfriend, two muscle sidekicks and a maniacal cat named Dr. Henry Metzger. Among the latter’s talents is the taming of a lunatic dog the size of a lion who provides his own set of laughs throughout the story.”Metzger’s Dog” came out more than 20 years ago–meaning it’s action takes place without a lot of electronic (cellphones, Internet, etc) assistance, and it is definitely richer and funnier for that lack.The cherry on the sundae is an introduction to the book by the zany Carl Hiaasen whose admiration for the book should give any potential reader of the novel a clue as to how far out on the edge it is.

⭐ PlantBirdWoman has written a fine and accurate review of this early Thomas Perry novel. Chinese Gordon and his savage cat, Dr. Henry Metzger, are (still) novel characters in the caper/action genre. The book reads as fresh’ today as it did when first released, maybe twenty years ago. Chinese Gordon has a gift for thinking outside the box and so does Thomas Perry as he unwinds the plot. The unexpected happens more often than not. Gordon and his ‘crew’ of former NCO’s/mercenaries are looking towards retirement. They are thinking ‘banks.’ Chinese is very gifted with machine tools so he makes his own electronically fired cannon–just like the ones mounted on jet fighters. His is custom mounted inside a panel delivery truck. Loaded with high explosive incendiary rounds he intends to use it to blow the doors off bank vaults or whatever. He tests it on a junked pickup truck out in the Southern California desert and, well-satisfied, leaves the scene. Nearby locals check out the noise and are convinced ‘aliens’ have been at work. The police investigate the scene and think ‘terrorist cell.’ That isn’t good for our protagonists.Next, they seek out a drug kingpin to launder the proceeds from their planned bank jobs. He demands that they prove themselves by recovering a pound of cocaine seized from him by the Feds, now awaiting use in medical experiments at a UCLA research facility. The wily Chinese Gordon inserts his team but the opportunistic Chinese Gordon sees a chance for a bonus when he hears members of another project talk about serious security upgrades to their offices. He breaks into those offices while his team boosts the cocaine and takes a small safe that he expects to contain whatever the new office thinks is valuable. It proves to be a multi-year record of planned CIA psy-ops, including descriptions of actual tests carried out on neighboring and friendly nations. Lots of long-term CIA networks could be compromised. The crew is just looking for a big score and this should do it. Unfortunately for them, the CIA is headed by men who don’t mind letting the body count build up. Cashing in rather than ‘cashing out’ provides most of the problems in this ironically funny adventure.

⭐ A ridiculously fun read. To understand a work one must first know its genre. This is, at its essence, a crime novel. Sometimes it is hard to know where fiction becomes fantasy. “Metzger’s Dog” challenges the reader to find the intersection of fiction, fantasy, and parody. What fun. The story is good. The writing excellent. Perry knows how to set a scene, how to describe people, and how to write spare dialogue that speaks paragraphs in a few words. And wry? If you, the reader, don’t chuckle audibly, I’ll eat my hat.

⭐ What can I say, except that this is the ONLY book written by my favorite mystery novel writer that I cannot recommend?Maybe it’s just me, but I found myself working too hard to get into the story & quit about 25% of the way in. I would rather reread Butcher’s Boy or a Jane Whitfield novel any day. It happens.That said, Thomas Perry remains my favorite popular novelist.

⭐ No comedy at all. This book is impossible to read. Choppy, disjointed and neither a comedy or a thriller. 12% in and I simply cannot waste any more time attempting to read this garbage.Sadly, when I went to return it today, Amazon tells me the window to return expired a week ago. I definitely will NOT be purchasing any thing from this author again.

⭐ One of my favorite books, and one of the best-written. I agree with another reviewer, I can’t see why this hasn’t been made into a movie. If it were, I’d pay to see it. I wasn’t aware of any dead spots; indeed, each time I read it, I don’t want to stop, because it’s so compelling. Chinese Gordon, his cronies Immelman and Kepler, and his girlfriend Margaret, are all three-dimensional. So is Porterfield. Perry shows rather than tells – where another writer might stop and narrate, Perry’s characters convey the information to us via dialog (or their own thoughts) that always moves the story along.Part of the magic of this book is the way Perry handles the discrepancy between how characters appear (to other characters in the story) and their “true” natures. This information trickles out bit by bit as the story unfolds; as we read “Appendix XXIII” we realize what a monster one of them is – a total contrast with what we thought at the beginning; the one who is supposedly “The Angel of Death” spends the majority of the book trying to save lives. Even the idiots in charge are better than 2-dimensional; we come to see why they are dangerous, and we despise them at the end – and wonder, “is it possible that it’s really this bad?”Every time I read this book, I’m stunned at how brilliant it is.

⭐ You sometimes watch a classic movie and think it’s great, much better than today’s efforts. Sometimes it’s not the case, and unfortunately that’s the case with this book. Consistently funny and very clever but it doesn’t not the spot, even though I was aware of was tongue in cheek.

⭐ I read reviews about the authors sense of humor and found the summary intriguing. I did have a laugh out loud moment by the 3rd page. By the 10th page there were so many f-bombs that I tossed this book into my trash file. Too bad authors can’t seem to find words to tell a story other than back alley trash talk. I won’t be reading this author again.

⭐ Let me say first, I love Thomas Perry’s books. The first one I ever read was Metzger’s Dog, and I laughed and was riveted all the way. The opening scene is terrific, when Chinese, our protagonist, picks up Metzger, the cat, and…but no, I won’t say anything more because it will spoil the hilarity of it. I have recently read Metzger’s Dog again, and smiled all the way through that opening once again. Chinese, his wonderful, beautiful, but mostly very smart girlfriend Margaret, and his idiot cohorts are entertaining as ever. I found the middle bogged down for me some when the Government gets involved, but that couldn’t stop me. Because I couldn’t wait for Metzger, the cat, and his buddy, the junkyard dog, to show up again. They are such a pair that you want them every other scene. At least. So don’t let the middle stop you or even slow you down. The end is quite satisfying.

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