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The Sleeping Tiger
Charged with two murders, six years apart, and with no defence worthy of the name, a guilty verdict against solicitor John Prescott seems inevitable. The history presented by the prosecuting counsel goes back five years into the past: to fateful meetings with the women in Prescott's life, Norah Browne and Harriet Reece; to the rupturing of friendships and relationships in a small town shattered by violent death. Prescott is powerless, apathetic even, when confronted by the overwhelming evidence. And yet someone else, one of the witnesses, must have been the killer. But which one?
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1968
2 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Dominic Devine
27 books1 followerDominic Devine was one of the pen names used by David Mcdonald Devine, a british writer of 13 crime novels.
See also:
D.M. Devine
See also:
D.M. Devine
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 4, 2018
The sleeping tiger of the title is John Prescott who stands accused of two murders. He is not my idea of one but never mind. Despite his general apathy and innocence he manages to marry one woman and attract the undying love of another- how does he do it? That is the question I was asking myself as I was finding the writing a little wooden and needed a distraction from the somewhat stilted dialogue. There is some casual sexism and violence towards women which I didn't like but it seemed to be par for the course back in the sixties when the book was written. Nevertheless the story does have some merit and the ending is good so it is worth reading.
April 1, 2019
This was a fun weekend read: another murder mystery by the sadly underrated D.M. Devine. I would never have discovered him if I had not come across another of his books, My Brother's Killer, in a bookstore where it was selling on a clearance shelf for a dollar.
That book inspired me to read more of Devine's books. This is my second and I find it even better than the first, even if Agatha Christie deemed My Brother's Killer to be one of the best mysteries in the twentieth century. I enjoyed this one better, for a number of reasons.
First, the characters were well-developed. Devine shows an acute insight into human nature. The protagonist, John Prescott, is insecure, angry about his parents' strict religious upbringing and yet shallow and selfish. He comes to recognize these latter traits in himself as his world comes crumbling around him and he becomes a suspect for the murder of his closest friends.
Because the story is narrated from third person-limited, we read only Prescott's thoughts and therefore we see the other characters evolve and change as he changes from a superficial person to one with greater depth. People who annoyed him, he begins to see in a different light, people who impressed him start to shrink as their own self-centered character becomes apparent to him.
Along the way, he gradually grows out of the insignificant, insecure passive person into one fully capable of exonerating himself from murder and finding the actual culprit.
The sleeping tiger gradually awakens.
The development of plot was also well done. It kept me going to the very end and I had to force myself not to read ahead to discover the murderer. It was an exciting, adventurous experience.
I highly recommend the book and plan on reading all of Devine's books.
That book inspired me to read more of Devine's books. This is my second and I find it even better than the first, even if Agatha Christie deemed My Brother's Killer to be one of the best mysteries in the twentieth century. I enjoyed this one better, for a number of reasons.
First, the characters were well-developed. Devine shows an acute insight into human nature. The protagonist, John Prescott, is insecure, angry about his parents' strict religious upbringing and yet shallow and selfish. He comes to recognize these latter traits in himself as his world comes crumbling around him and he becomes a suspect for the murder of his closest friends.
Because the story is narrated from third person-limited, we read only Prescott's thoughts and therefore we see the other characters evolve and change as he changes from a superficial person to one with greater depth. People who annoyed him, he begins to see in a different light, people who impressed him start to shrink as their own self-centered character becomes apparent to him.
Along the way, he gradually grows out of the insignificant, insecure passive person into one fully capable of exonerating himself from murder and finding the actual culprit.
The sleeping tiger gradually awakens.
The development of plot was also well done. It kept me going to the very end and I had to force myself not to read ahead to discover the murderer. It was an exciting, adventurous experience.
I highly recommend the book and plan on reading all of Devine's books.
January 26, 2020
Leonardo DiCaprio would love this book
October 22, 2018
David McDonald Devine wrote 13 detective novels, under his own name and as Dominic Devine, which were published originally between 1961 and 1981. He was on the administration staff of the University of St Andrews from 1946 until his death in 1980.His first novel was rated very highly by Agatha Christie.
This was his seventh, and features a solicitor, John Prescott, who is charged with two murders.
The plot is interestingly-structured and the writing is clear. The characters are neatly-portrayed. However, Prescott is almost unbelievably naive for a solicitor, and his actions, especially at the scenes of the two murders, are scarcely credible even in a character in a 1960's story.
I found a lot of his behaviour simply irritating. The depiction of women in the book is very much of its time and has not dated well. Despite these reservations, I did read on to find the solution which took me by surprise.
3.5 stars
This was his seventh, and features a solicitor, John Prescott, who is charged with two murders.
The plot is interestingly-structured and the writing is clear. The characters are neatly-portrayed. However, Prescott is almost unbelievably naive for a solicitor, and his actions, especially at the scenes of the two murders, are scarcely credible even in a character in a 1960's story.
I found a lot of his behaviour simply irritating. The depiction of women in the book is very much of its time and has not dated well. Despite these reservations, I did read on to find the solution which took me by surprise.
3.5 stars
September 13, 2020
Just finished my second murder mystery by D. M. Devine, The Sleeping Tiger, also from the Crime Classics series. John Prescott is on trial for two murders, the first of his best friend and the second of his secretary.
We meet John in the courtroom, resigned to the guilty verdict he is sure will come; hardly listening to the testimony, and doodling his initials and signature. He is a successful Solicitor in a successful practice, tied to a wife he hates, and ruled by his strict religious upbringing to be quiet and reticent. So repressed is he that his best friend Peter Reece has dubbed him the "Sleeping Tiger", for he's convinced that there is more to John than meets the eye.
As the damning testimony drones on he can tell by looking at the jury, and by his own admission that his barrister, the old and out of date Julius Rutherford, Q.C. is not up to the challenge, that he is all but convicted. He begins to go back in his mind to the events that have transpired 10 long years ago.
John, Peter Reece, and their friends Tim Raven, and Frank Hornby, and a well rounded cast of characters with complex relationships both work and romance, are woven into a tangled web that leads to the "suicide" of Peter, and John's hasty marriage to Peter's fiance Norah just a fortnight later. Scandalous, and all the village knows it.
Ten years later anonymous letters start popping up blackmailing people and claiming the suicide to be murder. John and Norah are on the verge of divorce, as Norah is sleeping around and rubbing it in his nose. John and Peter's sister Harriet try to work out who the blackmailer is when John stumbles on the grisly murder of his secretary and proceeds to do a number of incredibly stupid things like pulling the knife out of her getting his fingerprints on it, and getting blood all over himself. Harriet tries to help but gets convinced John killed her brother and his secretary.
Then Harriet does something during her testimony that awakens the Sleeping Tiger. She quietly admits that she still loves him. When John is called to the witness box he puts on a defiant defense that injects doubt as to his guilt.
I'm going to stop there so as not to spoil the rest of the action in this thriller that has you guessing as to the real killer; and I did not see it coming!
There's a reason Devine was Agatha Christie's favorite author. He writes a tight, complex story with full character development and enough motives to go around. His books are real page turners and I wish I could get hold of all of them. It's really sad that such good writers of the past get shunted aside for a lot of new, marginal ones, and as their books go out of print we can no longer read them. That's why I really appreciate the Arcturus Crime Classics series as so important. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great modern crime writers but I still want to read those classics.
This one is a definite 5 star
We meet John in the courtroom, resigned to the guilty verdict he is sure will come; hardly listening to the testimony, and doodling his initials and signature. He is a successful Solicitor in a successful practice, tied to a wife he hates, and ruled by his strict religious upbringing to be quiet and reticent. So repressed is he that his best friend Peter Reece has dubbed him the "Sleeping Tiger", for he's convinced that there is more to John than meets the eye.
As the damning testimony drones on he can tell by looking at the jury, and by his own admission that his barrister, the old and out of date Julius Rutherford, Q.C. is not up to the challenge, that he is all but convicted. He begins to go back in his mind to the events that have transpired 10 long years ago.
John, Peter Reece, and their friends Tim Raven, and Frank Hornby, and a well rounded cast of characters with complex relationships both work and romance, are woven into a tangled web that leads to the "suicide" of Peter, and John's hasty marriage to Peter's fiance Norah just a fortnight later. Scandalous, and all the village knows it.
Ten years later anonymous letters start popping up blackmailing people and claiming the suicide to be murder. John and Norah are on the verge of divorce, as Norah is sleeping around and rubbing it in his nose. John and Peter's sister Harriet try to work out who the blackmailer is when John stumbles on the grisly murder of his secretary and proceeds to do a number of incredibly stupid things like pulling the knife out of her getting his fingerprints on it, and getting blood all over himself. Harriet tries to help but gets convinced John killed her brother and his secretary.
Then Harriet does something during her testimony that awakens the Sleeping Tiger. She quietly admits that she still loves him. When John is called to the witness box he puts on a defiant defense that injects doubt as to his guilt.
I'm going to stop there so as not to spoil the rest of the action in this thriller that has you guessing as to the real killer; and I did not see it coming!
There's a reason Devine was Agatha Christie's favorite author. He writes a tight, complex story with full character development and enough motives to go around. His books are real page turners and I wish I could get hold of all of them. It's really sad that such good writers of the past get shunted aside for a lot of new, marginal ones, and as their books go out of print we can no longer read them. That's why I really appreciate the Arcturus Crime Classics series as so important. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great modern crime writers but I still want to read those classics.
This one is a definite 5 star
September 3, 2021
古典的なフダニットで面白かったです。
March 11, 2022
Got boring tbh
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews