Diamond Dogs - Softcover

Watt, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0715630121 ISBN 13: 9780715630129

Publisher: Boston: Little Brown,, 2000

Synopsis

Named after David Bowie's celebrated seventies album, itself influenced by William Burrough's 'cut-up' writing method, this novel is both a thriller and an unconventional love story. Set against the glitter of Las Vegas and the isolation of Nevada, "Diamond Dogs" is a portrayal of a father and son, whose distant relationship is haunted by the past, and virtually unspoken. A local murder enquiry in which the son is questioned, a cover-up by his father, Chief of Police, and an outsider intent on discovering the truth, sets an edgy, taut pace to this page-turner. As the invstigation slowly closes in, the son anxiously questions his father's motives and his own sanity; a showdown exposes the truth, with cataclysmic consequences.

About this title

Review:

Penzler Pick, October 2000: This disturbing first novel, set in Nevada, is the story of Neil Garvin, a high school football star who, in his own words, tells us of the night at Fred Billings's house when he drank more beer than he can remember.

Drinking beer is what high school jocks do, and for Neil, it also drives away the anger he feels at his father, at his life, and at the fact that his mother left them when Neil was a baby. Neil blames his distant and abusive father for driving her away. A charming man to those who don't know him, Neil's father spends his leisure time drinking Midori and listening to Neil Diamond, after whom he has named his son. (The scene where Neil's father takes him to Las Vegas for a Neil Diamond concert is a memorable one in a book filled with great scenes.)

Driving home from Fred's house in his father's car, Neil hits and kills a boy who is walking home from the party. Drunk and disoriented, Neil stuffs the body in the trunk, drives home, and passes out. When the body disappears from the trunk, Neil knows his father has found the body and hidden it, although not a word about this passes between them. Since Neil's father is the sheriff of the town, he is called in by the dead boy's family to find their missing son.

The investigation is seen through Neil's eyes as he squirms through his father's seeming inability to find any clues about the missing boy and his own growing closeness to the boy's family, especially his sister, who see Neil and his father as friends and allies. He also watches as his father battles with the FBI (the dead boy's uncle is an agent) over jurisdiction of the case.

While it is difficult to feel sorry for Neil as the net slowly closes around him, and his fear of being caught turns to self-loathing, the reader knows exactly what happened and feels like a participant. It is an uncomfortable feeling for the reader and a difficult mood for the author to maintain, but Alan Watt manages to pull it off without a hitch. --Otto Penzler

About the Author:

Alan Watt is a novelist and screenwriter. He has won a number of awards for his writing including France's 2004 Prix Printemps (best foreign novel) and the American Library Association's Alex Award. He was listed in The New York Time's New and Noteworthy book section, was a BookSense 76 pick, and a Barnes and Noble "Discover Great New Writers" recipient. He recently adapted Diamond Dogs to the big screen for French film company Quad Films (The Intouchables), and is executive producing with Alex Pettyer (I am Number Four, Magic Mike) set to star. Mr. Watt first taught a summer creative writing workshop at UCLA in 1998, and has been teaching and lecturing on the creative process in L.A. and at colleges around the country ever since. He spent three years teaching storytelling to inner city high school students through the non-profit arm of Spoken Interludes. He founded L.A. Writers' Lab in 2002 as a place for writers to deepen their craft by learning to marry the rigor of story structure to the wildness of their imaginations. He has taught everyone from award-winning authors and A-list screenwriters, to journalists, poets, actors, professional athletes, war veterans, housewives, doctors, lawyers, television showrunners, and anyone else with a story to tell. In 2011 he started a two publishing companies. The 90-Day Novel Press is a publisher of books on writing. Along with The 90-Day Novel, he is also publishing The 90-Day Rewrite, The 90-Day Screenplay and The 90-Day Play, as well as My First Novel: Tales of Woe and Glory, which is a series of essays written by well-known novelists on the trials and tribulations of becoming a professional writer. All profits for My First Novel will be donated to PEN CEnter USA.

About this edition

• Publisher: Boston: Little Brown,
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0715630121
• ISBN 13: 9780715630129
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 199