A Rec of a Brother

My brother recommended Metzger's Dog by Thomas Perry so much to me that he bought it for me and sent it to me. Despite my almost missing the book when it went directly to Spam in my email account, the book was great and I couldn't put it down.



According to my brother he read this when he was in high school. It obviously clouded his thinking if only because he plagiarized his thoughts when he told me about a great thriller about how terrorists could follow-up September 11th. A few dedicated souls with machine guns on freeways he thought would make people to scared to drive to work and help shut down the economy. This is described in great detail in Metzger's Dog but they go several times better than my brother's plot. My brother is one of my primary thriller plot providers (here for instance, this is one of his ideas), makes me worried that I need to read a few more of his recommendations before I decide to take any of them on.

I marked two passages, the first:
"Porterfield entered the committee room and classified the problem at a glance. There were no junior people scurrying in and out with earnest expressions, which meant the problem hadn't yet reached the moment when nothing could be done about it - the great flurry of pointless activity hadn't begun."

When I was in the Ranger's we called that flurry of activity "pinging." We said it along the lines of "He needs to quit pinging!" It made me smile to think about it in these terms and hearing Porterfields cynicism about it was clarifying and fun to read.

The second passage:
"The fact that he appeared to be a fool was part of his protection as an operative; the fact that he was a genuine fool meant the disguises was impenetrable"

Also an elucidative passage regarding Porterfield. Other Dr. Henry Metzger (a focal point of the first line (here)) and Metzger's dog, Porterfield was my favorite character.

I look forward to reading more by Perry if this opening salvo is any indication of the fun inherent in his writing.