Review--Lyin' Like a Dog

A Great Story, July 26, 2010
By S. Peek (Rocky Mountains, USA) - See all my reviews


This review is from: Lyin' Like a Dog (Paperback)
'Lyin' Like A Dog' is a well written and highly entertaining story of young boys growing up in the South in the 1940s.

This novel has some of the same feel as a couple of highly acclaimed novels set a hundred years before - Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. This one is set in Norphlet, Arkansas and features 12 year old Richard Mason and his sidekick John Clayton Reed. Much like Mark Twain's characters, Mason and Reed are young adventurers who deal with a wide variety of situations that are great fun for the boys as well as the readers. The duo have run ins with bootleggers, concoct an ill advised get rich quick scheme, and much more.

I believe the story is part fiction and part autobiographical. Whatever the combination of those is, the result is highly entertaining.

Although I am certainly not trying to 'dis' an American legend like Mark Twain, this book is almost as good as his two classics. If the story were expanded a bit, it just might top Twain's best. I have not read Mason's previous book, 'The Red Scarf', but it is going to go on my 'to read list'.