Subject: Review: Conscience of the Beagle, Patricia Anthony

From: [email-masked] (Dana Goldblatt Anthony)
Date: 24 Jan 94 03:46:10 GMT

Review of _Conscience of the Beagle_ by Patricia Anthony

Review written by Dana L. G. Anthony (no relation!)

Conscience of the Beagle
by Patricia Anthony
201 pp.
Publisher: First Books 1993
po box 2449 woburn MA 01888
$21.99 Hardcover

There is more in this 200 page book than in many twice or
five times as long:  it invites comparisons to the best sf/detective
 novels including Bester's Demolished Man.  Like them, it goes past
 the conventions of both genres to provide three-layered stories:
 psychological, social, and political:  The mental states of the 
detective and quarry; the thriller story of the chase, as a menace 
to society is hunted down; and the science fictional specialty of
explicating the political and technological changes that humanity
has undergone.
   The narrator, Dyle, is a character reminiscent of those in CJ 
Cherryh's work: gifted and competent, he has recently been 
through a serious trauma.  In fact, his entire detective team, sent
to a paradisiacal planet with a religious dictatorship government to
investigate a series of bombings, have devastating psychic wounds.
   Their primary suspect and best informant, the Minister of 
Science, is a well characterized antagonist; the author skillfully 
shows his good and bad sides alternately, never quite letting the
reader decide what he's up to and whether to trust him until
the spectacular and surprising (at least to me; I never was that
great at guessing mysteries) conclusion.  (which successfully
wraps up all three of the stories: the personal, the detective
story, and the sf story!)

%T Conscience of the Beagle
%A Patricia Anthony
%I First Books
%C  Woburn, MA
%D 1993
%P 201
%O hardcover, $21.99
%G ISBN 1-880448-30-0