Diamond Dogs [Paperback]

Alan Watt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001

Star quarterback Neil Garvin is as cruel to his fellow students at his Nevada high school as his abusive father is to him. When a random act of violence takes a life, Neil's father, the local sheriff, takes control and covers up the crime. Wrestling with the mysterious disappearance of his mother years before, Neil must find his way of out of his prison of fear.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Highly readable, if finally unconvincing, Watt's debut novel is the story of a bitter family legacy and a traumatic reckoning, as Watt explores the reasons an abusive father might risk everything to cover up a crime committed by his damaged, equally cruel teenage son. Inebriated after a party with his high school football team, Neil Garvin, 17, first-string quarterback and "the best arm in Nevada," accidentally kills a classmate, Ian Curtis. Neil's father, the sheriff of their small town near Las Vegas, covers up for his son. Ian's parents report the boy missing, and more than 300 students join in a search led by Neil's father. Mrs. Curtis asks her brother, an FBI agent, to help, and as the FBI tightens the net, Neil and his father must face some truths about their family. Watt, who is also a stand-up comic, has a knack for deploying well-timed plot points to reveal crucial information. The book starts off with faithful characterizations of the sad, angry father and son, and the dialogue between them is appropriately savage, but there are key moments in the story that don't ring true. The most unconvincing scene occurs at the narrative's dramatic apex, when Neil finally, and improbably, discovers the dark secret of why his mother left home when he was three. At the same time, the reasons for Neil's hellish childhood become melodramatically clear. Still, there are certain pleasures in this novel, including incisive scenes that capture the petty cruelties and poignant betrayals of adolescents. The author also gives vivid voice to a character type that has become a staple in modern American fiction: a man unmoored by divorce and filled with festering anger and alienation. Watt takes the archetype a step further, delineating how the father's desperate behavior affects his son, and how this pair find an uneasy peace in breaking the chain of lies and violence. 5-city author tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446677841
• ISBN-13: 978-0446677844
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #294,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alan Watt began his career as a standup comic, headlining extensively throughout North America and performing on dozens of television shows, including Caroline's Comedy Hour, An Evening At The Improv and performing his own one-hour comedy special, Comedy Now, at the Toronto Opera House for the CBC. He also appeared at the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival. He moved to Los Angeles in 1994 where he wrote for MTV, and appeared on Seinfeld.

Mr. Watt has written screenplays for numerous production companies and is the author of the bestselling Little, Brown novel Diamond Dogs, which won a number of awards including France's 2004 Prix Printemps (best foreign novel from the Independent Bookseller's Assoc.) and the American Library Assoc.'s Alex Award. In 2007 his first play, Last Night, was produced in Los Angeles at the SFS Theater to rave reviews. "Watt's gifts of structure, economy, characterization and humor are beyond reproach." - LA Weekly.

In the 1990's he spent six years as a consultant and speechwriter to the US marketing director of one of the world's top accountancy firms.

He recently sold his screenplay adaptation of Diamond Dogs to French film company, Quad Entertainment, and will executive produce the film.

Mr. Watt first taught a summer creative writing workshop at UCLA in 1998, and has been teaching and lecturing on the creative process in LA 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 LA Writers' Lab in 2002 as a place for writers to deepen their craft by learning to marry the rigor of structure to the wildness of their imaginations. He has taught everyone from award-winning authors to A-list screenwriters, journalists, poets, actors, professional athletes, war veterans, housewives, doctors, lawyers, television showrunners, Emmy-winning directors, first-time writers, and anyone else with a story to tell.

In 2011 he started a small publishing company, Writers Tribe Books, which will publish approx. six books of literary fiction each year. The first title, Allison Burnett's Death By Sunshine, was released in Nov. 2011. In early 2012, The 90-Day Rewrite will be released, as well as Mr. Watt's new novel, Days Are Gone.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enthralling Story from Page 1 on............................, October 20, 2000

By 

Joseph J. Hanssen "Joe" (Upstate New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Diamond Dogs: A Novel (Paperback)

Diamond Dogs is a wonderful work of fiction you can't put down from the moment you read the first page. Alan Watt has written an exciting, non-stop story centering around a hit and run accident and its subsequent cover-up. A wonderful suspenseful tale of a mixed-up but loving relationship between father and son.

High School quarterback Neil Garvin, a much-worshipped high school football star narrates the story. It's thru his eyes that the whole story enfolds, and you quickly realize that teenagers today are much more mature than we give them credit for. It's over the course of the next three days following the accident that Neil's life is completely changed when his father, the sheriff, helps cover-up the accident. We become a participant in the events that follow, whether we like it or not, and we get drawn into the complexities of small-town life, and father and son bonding.

Whether it takes you a few hours, a day, or 2 days, this is a book you won't forget. A very promising debut novel from this author. An easy read that will keep you very entertained. Bravo!!

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars POWERFUL AND ORIGINAL!, December 16, 2000

By 

Christian "Writer/Human" (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diamond Dogs: A Novel (Paperback)

"Diamond Dogs" refers to those elite who possess the talent and charisma to rise above the pack...and Alan Watt has captured perfectly the double-edged sword that such talent becomes, especially when you're 17-year-old Neil Garvin. His young life changes dramatically one fateful night as he drives home drunkenly from a friends party, and he strikes and kills a fellow student in his father's car. Not even his sheriff father can save him from the personal hell which he endures when he makes a series of bad choices. Although the story ends in triumphant redemption, this victory is bittersweet for both Neil and his tormented father. Both have abandonment issues that color their every decision, and by the final page, each deals with those in cataclysmic ways...resulting in one of the most powerfully triumphant stories to grace a page. Watt has captured Neil's tortured soul in an original voice, and aptly portrays the effects of two men's choices that go horribly wrong on a family that is already deteriorating beyond repair. Far from being depressing, "Diamond Dogs" is hopeful and poetic. A highly recommended read!

Also recommended as companion books: "Good Times, Bad Times"--James Kirkwood

"A Separate Peace"--John Knowles

"The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys"--Chris Fuhrman

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific teenage first-person narrator, November 2, 2000

By 

David M. Scott "David Meerman Scott" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Diamond Dogs: A Novel (Paperback)

Powerfully written, deep but approachable, Diamond Dogs is a great read. The book's best quality is the first-person narrator. Seventeen-year-old Neil tells us the story in his own voice, but unlike other first-person teenage narrators, Alan Watt captures the thoughts, actions, fears and emotions of a young person extremely well. In so many other books the narrator seems like a kid written by an adult, either too wise or to naïve for his (or her) supposed years. As Neil tells us his story, Watt deftly moves from action to thoughts, from detail of the crime to the results of the action within the walls of his school, at home and in Neil's private world. Terrific teenage first-person narrative of a multi-layered story makes Diamond Dogs an important book.