Barking Dogs

by Robert Irvine

The network news crew flying out from Los Angeles to cover a forest fire in Idaho believe themselves entitled to danger pay. The blaze has already completely destroyed a rural religious community and all its inhabitants and is still raging, but that's not the reason they feel at risk. The danger is from their onscreen reporter, beautiful, sexy, and malignantly ambitious Vicki Garcia. When Vicki turns her wiles on a man who has something she wants - whether an extra minute on camera or a helicopter ride to the off-limits scene of the tragedy - she gets it. Sometimes it provides great coverage; it can also get one or more of her victims incarcerated, incapacitated, or incinerated. Particularly at peril is the crew's smitten field producer, Kevin Manwaring, whom Vicki keeps on edge with unspoken - and unkept - promises of delights to come. The land occupied by the gentle people who perished in the conflagration is coveted by a mining company, and when the TV technicians discover a severely wounded dog with a bullet in its chest, they begin to wonder about the true origin of the fire. This rare and authentic look at the people of TV news at work on location makes a gripping thriller and provides a humorous but hard look at some driven characters in the manic world of network television.

Genres: Mystery

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Aka Val Davis, R.R. Irvine, Peter Heath, Peter H. Fine, Peter Heath Fine

Robert Ralstone Irvine studied anthropology and archaeology at the University of California at Berkeley and now lives in Northern California.

Reviews

[Kem · Rating 3 out of 5]

A different kind of plot which would have made the book better without all the news people's politics that didn't have anything to do with it. I did not like the female news anchor at all. The producer is the one with instincts for a story. If it weren't for him, the bad guy would not have been caught. I bet he didn't get credit either.

[Rick Farlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

CHIRP AUDIOBOOK

Of the 42 chapters in this book, it was not until chapter 25, when the action actually started, that it became interesting. I thought that the narrator, Charlie Thurston, did an excellent job.

[Eugene Miya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found his old book in the Mountain View public library (paper). I just had a phone call with Bob who was the spouse of an old boss of mine.

I was expecting a new Traveler (as in Moroni) story, but this is a one off with a news crew going to a forest fire in ID (this predated the big fires in CA by a couple of decades). The story split between the correspondent (Vicky (called Icky by coworkers to her annoyance) Garcia) and her producer Manwaring (he had a dog named Buttons).

His writing style is very short 2-3 page chapters. This differs a bit from his earlier newsroom novels.

Bob's readership over the decades surprises me. I found obscure friends of mine who read Bob's book, and in a couple of cases an ex-girlfriend of mine as well as other friends interested in writing novels would speak with Bob about his advice. It's interesting to me to watch these people interact with Bob as a member of the Mystery Writers of America (I asked him about Hillerman who was once President of the Writers). I make no pretense about writing the Great American novel. I leave that to others. Oh yeah, he uses the names of real colleagues in some cases. Just names.

My reason for the call to to learn Bob changed publishers away from St. Martins.

The book is about media, it's not a detective/police mystery. The characters don't go chasing the murderer. That's for the police/sheriff to do.