The Sound and the Furry: A Review

I think I was half-way through this book before I realized I was saying the title wrong. The word in the title was “Furry” and not “Fury.” This is the first book I have read that is in the Chet and Bernie mysteries by Spencer Quinn. It is not the first book in the series, (it is actually the sixth) and after having read it, I can say that I don’t think it made any difference to me that I had not read the earlier books. I was able to grasp the characters and their relationships just fine.

The book is narrated in first-person by Chet. Chet is Bernie’s dog. He has many characteristics you would expect in a dog. He is fiercely loyal to Bernie. He experiences things through his nose and his ears to a degree that humans can’t begin to fathom. Chet can understand English words quite well (he would have to if he is the narrator) but metaphors and figures of speech throw him. Check out this example when Bernie is counting out money:

“Three grand on the nose,” Bernie said, although he didn’t put it anywhere near his nose.

After a few of these, I was thinking that this shtick might get annoying before I got to the end of the book. It actually grew on me, and I found I didn’t mind it so much. We see Bernie (as we see the world) through Chet’s biased eyes.

The mystery itself gets as convoluted as the bayous it takes place in, and I am not sure it completely wrapped up all the loose ends, but it seems to more or less come together in the end. It is entertaining and I will probably read more in the series.

Star Liner

Comments

Second Wind

You have heard about athletes getting their second wind? It is not that they feel better, that they are warmed up and ready to run more easily. It is not psychological (at least, not all psychological). No. There is an actual physiological truth to a second wind. It all has to do with respiration. When I say respiration, I am not talking about breathing. Respiration is a biochemical process that happens at the cellular level. It is how the cell gets energy. There are lots of chemical processes that are constantly going on in each cell, and those processes require energy. Without a constant feed of energy, the cell will die. The more demands there are on a cell, the more energy it needs. For example, every one of your muscle cells need more energy when you are running. In fact, you won’t be able to run if the cells don’t have sufficient energy for it. The energy currency of the cell is a molecule called ATP. You may have heard that sugar is how our bodies get energy, which is tr

Roy Batty Figures it out

This is written with the assumption that the reader has seen the film Blade Runner . If you haven’t, you may not get much out of it. In one of the last scenes in Blade Runner , the killer android Roy Batty, who holds Deckard’s life in his hands, has a remarkable speech: “I've seen things... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time to die.” I am told that the speech that was written was not working very well, and Rutger Hauer was told to just improvise something. Wow. He nailed it. At this point in the film Roy Batty has been the villain throughout. We have been rooting for Deckard (Harrison Ford) to take him out, but it is not going well, and it seems like Batty is about to kill him. At the last second, Roy Batty pulls Deckard up, to keep him from falling to his death. Then he delivers this

The Outsider

I am reading The Outsider by Stephen King. The first 150 pages or so I found disturbing. Not for the reason you might think. It is not scary, not creepy in a traditional horror way, but disturbing in a tragic way. The first hundred to 150 pages is tragedy on top of tragedy. The most disturbing thing to me (it is disturbing to me anytime I encounter it in any story) is a false accusation. A man is falsely accused and may well be convicted of a horrific crime. That kind of thing disturbs my soul. It makes the whole world seem wrong. I have always been disturbed by stories with that kind of thing. And why not? It happens in real life too. That makes it all the more horrific. In the Jim Crow South, all you had to do was make an accusation against a black man to set the lynch mob in action. No need to bother with a trial. But even if there was a trial, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, innocent or not. We see Vladimir Putin inventing charges against people and they get locked up (or

A speculative mind

Search This Blog