Customer Reviews

Lost Dog

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4 star:		(1)
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There's so much to admire about Bill Cameron's debut thriller. My favorite thing is that murder and being a witness to it evoke real emotion in the characters. These people are deeply real. The protagonist, Peter, is hardly a hero as the book opens, stifled underneath emotional scar tissue, battling the yuppie angst of losing his banking job and being henpecked by his maternal sister. He does find both the will and the strength to solve the murders, but doing so both costs him heavily and ultimately allows him to grow. And no one -- not the villain or his victim -- is bad to the core. They're all damaged people acting out the hurt they have suffered on others -- and often the appropriate people.

Cameron gets us to buy a string of coincidences that seem just implausible enough to really have happened. And there's a romance subplot in which neither character, even wearing makeup and heavily airbrushed, would make it into a Harlequin.

I'm being vague so as not to spoil it for you, but Cameron renders the climactic scene in an unconventional, unexpected, deeply felt and subtle way.

There are authors on the bestseller racks -- including one Robert Parker mentioned within the text of the book -- who should retire and make way for fresh, new voices of a more emotionally in-touch generation. Writers like Bill Cameron.

On a gray Portland morning, unemployed Peter McKrall searches the park for his niece's lost stuffed animal, but instead comes upon a dead body. The trauma of the event is an uncomfortable reminder of his own dark history, and soon Peter, a man trying to break a kleptomania habit, finds himself trapped in the middle of an investigation he wants nothing to do with.

Cops make him uncomfortable. Dead people make him uncomfortable. Having his name and face on the evening news makes him uncomfortable.

He's alone with no one to trust or confide in until he meets Ruby Jane. When a second murder takes place, Peter's painful past comes back to haunt him and Ruby Jane's life is put in danger.

LOST DOG by Bill Cameron is a beautifully written and masterful work of character-driven crime fiction. One of the most fascinating and compelling main characters I've read in a long time. A bad guy real enough to smell. A plot that fits together like a puzzle.

I was starving for a personal story. Give me real people. Give me a story with truth. As soon as I started LOST DOG my heart began to beat faster. This was the book I'd been craving.

Bill Cameron manages to deftly strip away the distance. Not only does he give us a knockout plot, he gives us real people in real settings. He gives us characters we care about, characters we know and want to know. And like real life, the darkest moments often contain humor. I laughed out loud several times.

anne frasier

This is the first book I have read of Bill Cameron's (only because it's his debut book). But I can assure you, it won't be my last. I LOVED this book.

I'm a real sucker for anti-heroes, especially when they are written with such loving care as this author has done. Cameron's kleptomaniac protagonist happens upon a dead body in a park near his home and reports it to the police, trying to do the right thing. Big mistake, pal--but unavoidable. His grisly discovery happened while he was searching for his niece's stuffed pooch. A perfectly innocent endeavor that springboards this troubled man into a spiraling nightmare. And a surprising subplot of a romantic interest for this hapless hero was a real gem.

Cameron also paints a vivid picture of a frighteningly disorganized killer that sticks with the reader long after they've put down the book. Real people caught in a really bad day. Sign me up for Cameron's next book. This LOST DOG has found a home.

Bill Cameron knows his way around the mean streets of Portland. In the tradition of no good deed should go unpunished, Lost Dog gives you the perfect fall guy, a flawed protagonist who makes you hold your breath. Careening between what will he do next and what will happen to him next, this tasty piece of character-driven noir keeps you guessing from beginning to end. If you like them real with no pulled punches, the beautifully written Lost Dog is for you.

Robert Fate, author of Baby Shark

I've waited three years to write this review of Bill Cameron's "Lost Dog" since I first met Bill during the 2007 Willamette Writers Conference in Portland, OR. I had heard quite a bit about "Lost Dog" by then but I hadn't read the book yet, so it was an honor to get to meet Bill in person and exchange books with him. My first impression of Bill Cameron was that he was the ultimate "nice guy," a geniune give you the shirt off his back type of individual, and he is. But I found it a little hard to believe that anyone who was so nice could write a gripping crime novel about a not so nice story of murder, and human failings set in a big city which is far too often portrayed as a utopian Northwest nirvana. I turned out to be happily wrong. Bill Cameron is not a "nice guy" when he writes, but he is one hell of a nice writer. Three years, and three novels have provided me with proof positive that, word for word, Bill Cameron is without a doubt one of the best crime fiction authors in the country. "Lost Dog" peeled back the fragrant petals of the "Rose City" and exposed its clandestine underbelly of crime, and corruption like no other crime novel about Portland has ever done. And the characters from "Lost Dog (2007)" who have carried over into Bill's two follow up standalone mysteries "Chasing Smoke (2008)" and "Day One (2010)" have made these books, with their even richer, and more complex story lines, exponentially better efforts than the original. Bill Cameron's next novel, "County Line," will be published in June, 2011 by Tyrus Books. But if you love savoring your crime fiction, I suggest you start with "Lost Dog" and work your way up from "fantastic," to...well, you'll see.The Sparrow's Blade

Out for his early morning jog, Peter McKrall searches the playground behind his house for his niece's stuffed dog, which she'd left behind there the day before. He doesn't find it, but he does stumble on a corpse, a woman covered in newspapers and hidden inside a concrete tube. A bout of vomiting and a call to 911 later and Peter's telling his story to the police, and beginning to look like a suspect himself. Peter's got a history of small-time crimes and is wont to antagonize the police unnecessarily. Besides, it's not the first corpse he's ever found.

Lost Dog is told from the perspectives of both Peter and the real killer, Jake. The latter is a young guy with a tenuous hold on reality at best who appears, at least at first, to have no rational motive for his crimes. The chapters told from his point of view are expletive-filled rants that do, however, finally cohere to give us some insight into his insane thought processes. Peter and Jake can be seen as reverse images of one another--both have unusual relationships with their dominant sisters; one man flirts with lawlessness but hasn't crossed to the dark side while the other's long gone; one comes from a happy home and the other is the product of dysfunction.

Lost Dog is a decent enough read, but there were a couple things that bothered me about it. In parts the dialogue does not seem realistic--that between Peter and his sister, for example, between some of the policemen. More troublesome, though, is that Peter does a few truly stupid things which either make him look even more guilty to the police or put his life in peril. One stupid thing in particular leads to the book's denouement--so it serves a narrative purpose--but it's very hard to believe that Peter would not have anticipated the potential for danger in what he was doing. Not a bad read, though, and Peter--after a rough start--turns out to be a likable protagonist.

-- Debra Hamel

It's to hard believe that this is Bill Cameron's debut novel because it is beatifully written and certainly a roller coaster ride through the city of Portland.'Lost Dog' is one of those rare novels where the characters are palpable and the dialogue realistic. The twists and turns are somewhat foreseeable for the avid reader but Cameron's writing keeps the pages turning because you simply have to know what happens next. What was most enjoyable about the book was the character developmentcoupled with their scarred backgrounds and how those backgrounds impacted their futures. This is a murder mystery worth reading!!

Who'd of thought a lost stuffed dog could turn a man's existence into a living nightmare and end with his healing and a new start. But that's exactly what happens when Peter McKrall, a man on a path of self-destruction, goes looking for his niece's stuff toy and winds up discovering a corpse and becoming the prime murder suspect.

Lost Dog is full of deeply drawn and sympathetic characters. There's not a cardboard one in the bunch. And as other reviewers have said here, even the killer, as demented as he is, is seen as tragic and sympathetic.

Bravo to Bill Cameron for creating such a readable and compelling book.