Dog Days: A Novel [Hardcover]

Daniel Lyons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 1998

Love, sex, death, money, and dogs -- they're all here in Dan Lyons's debut novel, Dog Days. Lyons gives us a hip and hilarious tale of love (both canine and carnal) and a story of revenge gone wrong. Packing the same contemporary verve as Douglas Coupland's Microserfs and the criminally black humor of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, Dog Days is a coming-of-age story that deftly deals with the confusion, hopes, and fears that go hand-in-hand with being smart, ambitious, and twenty-four years old.

Reilly is a software developer living in Boston's North End. He's a young guy in a young business where the speed of change guarantees that only the fast survive. But Reilly doesn't know how fast things can change until he starts playing vendetta with a local mafioso.

Before this fracas got started, Reilly thought he had it made. He had a beautiful girlfriend named Jeanie who had rowed at Harvard, and he and his roommate, Evan, were working on a project that was going to make them both rich. But for Reilly, the good times don't last long. First Jeanie leaves him for one of the suits in marketing, and then his big project falls to pieces. Then one summer night, Reilly decides to leave his vintage BMW in Davio Giaccalone's parking space. Naturally enough, the car ends up tireless. Reilly vows to get revenge, and he's angry enough to do just about anything to even the score.

With Evan's help, Reilly devises a plan to take an eye for an eye by abducting Giaccalone's most prized possession: a gorgeous jet-black champion racing grey-hound named Coco. When their little prank turns into serious blackmail with thirty thousand dollars on the line, Reilly and Evan are in way over their heads.

But with the help of their friend and neighbor, the beautiful Maria, they manage to return the dog and collect the money, only to have Coco lead Giaccalone and his goons right back to their doorstep. Taking Coco with them, the three flee as far and as fast as they can. Soon Reilly must face a showdown not only with the mobsters but also with himself, as he has to figure out what matters most, love or money.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Reading Dog Days will give many readers a strange sense of déjà vu: characters and lines seem oddly familiar, conjuring up thoughts of a book just read or a TV show watched last week. This is no coincidence. As Evan, a software developer, Star Trek fanatic, and the protagonist's sidekick, notes, "Nostalgia used to have a twenty-year lag. In the seventies everyone was into the fifties. But then in the eighties everyone was into the seventies. Now, in the nineties, we're into the nineties. What's left? Nothing. Time folds in on itself, like a black hole. It's the millennium, the collapse of culture." While Dog Days may not embody "the collapse of culture," it certainly employs the technique of folding in on itself, and Daniel Lyons uses this approach to its fullest extent. Combing pop culture, he amalgamates the mobsters of Elmore Leonard, Wired jargon, and the Gen-X characters of Douglas Coupland, all the while throwing in sly references to everything from Planet of the Apes to Starsky and Hutch to Pulp Fiction. The result is a clever romp through the software industry with a wide detour into the workings of the Mafia.

Reilly and his business partner-roommate, Evan, are creating a program to allow shopping on the Web at Ionic, the fifth largest software design firm in the world. At 24, Reilly is the luckiest guy around--he has a beautiful girlfriend, a job he loves, a vintage BMW. But, as he points out, you can't think that you deserve what you have, because the minute you do, everything will vanish. Which, of course, is just what happens. His girlfriend dumps him for a VP in marketing, his project is slated to be canceled, and when he parks in the wrong part of his Boston neighborhood, his car is sabotaged by the local Mafioso. Reilly has had enough. When the opportunity presents itself, he kidnaps the mobster's prized greyhound. The prank, though, escalates into serious crime, and Reilly finds he has taken on way more than he expected.

Reilly and Evan are two of the more engaging characters in pop fiction today. Though they are software geeks, they have enough depth and energy that--despite the full Trekkie costume Evan keeps in his closet--they make the stereotype believable. Lyons is at his best when describing Reilly at work and the politics of the software industry, but it's too bad he didn't mine this more. His writing, though, is compelling, and you can't help but root for the hapless antihero, even as he gets into more and more trouble. --Jenny Brown

From Publishers Weekly

Problems plague this debut from Playboy Fiction Award winner Lyons about a self-absorbed yuppie software developer who runs afoul of the Boston mob. The unlikable Reilly narrates his unlikely adventures while recovering from a breakup with beautiful, successful Harvard alumna Jeannie. While Reilly moons, his pet software scheme gets scuttled, leaving him and his roommate and collaborator, Evan, nothing better to do than war with their neighbors in Boston's blue-collar Italian North End, where the two men (inexplicably) rent a shabby apartment. Only beautiful, college-educated Maria?a checkout girl at the local grocery who dreams of a job in the Peace Corps and falls in love with Reilly?mediates between the two factions. When local Mafia don Davio Giaccolone slashes Reilly's tires, Reilly retaliates by kidnapping Davio's beloved greyhound; Davio vows revenge and chases Evan, Reilly and Maria down to Miami, where they hide out with Maria's uncle Santo, a retiree whose secret connections guarantee a saccharine happy ending for everyone involved. By that time, however, any slim enjoyment of the characters' adolescent antics has been ruined by slow pacing and made-for-TV sentimentality.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (June 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684840006
• ISBN-13: 978-0684840000
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,922,650 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lyons is a Contender, September 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dog Days (Paperback)

This book can be read on many levels, but it really isn't a novel about the mob, or about a greyhound, or about cyberculture. It's a novel about a young man coming to terms with himself and deciding what matters in life.

What gives this book it's real power is that the author has done a creditable job of asking the big questions, the questions that we don't seem to have time for anymore. And the vehicle he's done it with stands up as good, fast paced, entertainment as well.

John Grisham, a mindnumbing hack of a writer, isn't even in the same league with Lyons; though one might understand why the Grisham fan below sells Lyons short. The comparison with Elmore Leonard is a little more apropos, but Leonard trades in a different currency than Lyons. Lyons' primary characters are people you might know, or want to, while Leonard's are the sort of two dimensional automotons from televisionland you suffer silently every day in the world.

The transitions that bother some of the reviewers below are actually accomplished quite seamlessly. I'd submit that the complaints are really that the book you finish reading here is not the book you started out reading. Lyons leads you from what looks like a yuppie computer novel to what looks like a comedic novel to what looks like a crime novel/love story. And finally, at the end you realize that all along it's been all of these and a coming of age story, done with humor, finesse, understanding, and insight. In other words, it's a bit like life itself.

Lyons is the kind of writer who has the talent and the instincts to help recreate the novel as meaningful art, in the terms of our times. If he's willing to risk it and if enough people buy his books to motivate the publishing houses to give him the chance.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I enjoyed the insight into the computer culture., May 14, 2001

By 

Cham Green (Merryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dog Days (Paperback)

Dogs Days by Daniel Lyons was a unique book for me to explore. I work in the dot com world, own a retired greyhound and have spent many years in the past working in the field of waste management in New Jersey if you know what I mean, so I feel uniquely qualifed to review this book. I cracked up at the description of the techie hotshots because it was so right on the money. The arrogance and self centeredness of these kids was descriptive and precise. We know almost immediately that these geeks would get what they deserved and there was nobody better to complete the task than the goons from North Boston, two cultures intertwine that deserve eachother. I really felt sorry for the grey since I know how high maintenance they are and the poor dog had to put up with this high tech high jinx insanity. The first half of the book was great, describing the false promises the software industry offered these kids resulting in unbelievable work schedules and enthusiasm for their work. When the corporate powers that be finally nixed their project things get ugly as they often do. The kids were unable to see between the lines and through their bosses smoke and mirrors, something the older generation is more adept at which is why high tech hates greyhairs. The book was well done but falters during the second half when the focus is on the race track and gumbas in Florida.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A rare laugh-outloud novel, July 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Dog Days: A Novel (Hardcover)

Lyon's first novel -- based on an excellent short story from his previously published collection -- is one of those rare books that made me laugh outloud and demand that people around me read specific passages to see if they too had the same warped sense of humor that Lyons and I seem to share.

The scenes set in the offices of Ionic, where Reilly and Evan torment a colleague, one Janet Scuto, are some of the best send ups of Dilbert Cubicalism since Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. When asked in a survey to suggest what they would like to see stocked in the office vending machines, Reilly and Evan suggest "handguns and Ecstasy."

The book would have ended well with the boomerang-return of Coco -- life on the lam from the mob was the low point of the story -- but the first two-thirds of the book are some of the best comic writing to be published since Barry Hannah's Geronimo Rex.

A great Boston novel from a great Boston writer!