Yet another recommendation from Nancy Pearl, this book is delightfully quirky. It opens when Chinese Gordon is awakened by thieves breaking into his shop, downstairs from his living quarters. He has no weapons at hand so he takes desperate measures, although he knows there will be consequences. As the thieves move into the room and underneath the landing where he is hiding, Chinese drops his cat on the head of one of the thieves. The screams of surprise and distress-- by all parties involved-- convinces the thieves to depart in a hurry. Doctor Henry Metzger, by the way, is the cat and the dog in question is basically a junkyard brute trained to maim and kill. How he comes into Chinese's life and become the property of Doctor Henry Metzger you'll have to find out for yourself. Chinese, his woman friend Margaret and a couple of his equally unredeemed buddies stumble into the middle of a CIA plot and decide to blackmail the organization for 10 million dollars. They cleverly manage to play most of the bad guys against each other, shut down all the freeways in Los Angeles and get away with their ill-gotten gains, and you'll find yourself rooting for them the whole time. Perry, btw is the author of The Butcher's Boy, but it's been so long since I read it, I may have to add it to the pile beside my bed.
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