The screenplay for the film Sleeping Dogs (2024) was adapted from E O Chirovici’s The Book of Mirrors.
Chirovici’s tantalizing novel has three narrators – Peter Katz, John Keller and Roy Freeman – and each is allocated a section in the book to give their findings. Consequently, there’s repetition, facts are disputed, and opinions differ. Readers are recommended to follow the ABC of policing: accept nothing; believe no-one; and challenge everything.
Peter Katz, a literary agent, receives extracts from a manuscript that Richard Flynn has written. It recounts the circumstances surrounding the brutal death of Joseph Wieder, a professor at Princeton University, in December 1987.
Katz recalls that Flynn, a student, was one of the murder suspects at the time. No perpetrator was found and the police file was marked unsolved. He wonders if Flynn had managed to elude police suspicion and whether a belated confession might be included in the part he has not received. Unfortunately, Flynn, a heavy smoker, dies of lung cancer and the manuscript goes missing.
John Keller, a former investigative journalist, sets out, with Peter Katz’s encouragement, to reconstruct the circumstances for a true crime book.
He collaborates with Roy Freeman, an ex-detective inspector in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Freeman was assigned to investigate the murder in 1987 and now decides to re-examine the case.
The author’s style is beguiling. The three narrators chat to us as if we’re sitting opposite them. There is extraneous material that slows progress and confusion as to what actually did happen.
Fortunately, there’s an epilogue that helps us to arrive at the truth.
Reviewed by Clive Hodges
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