I’m a big-time animal lover. I’m talking “on the road to being a crazy cat lady” kind of animal lover. So why in the wide world of sports am I reading a thriller that goes into gruesome detail about how animal shelters euthanize animals?

Rhetorical questions aside, Stephen Spignesi does a halfway decent job with his first novel, DIALOGUES. And I say “halfway” because that’s just about how far into the book I got before I started feeling gypped as a reader. The premise is intriguing enough: the improbably named Tory Troy, a young certified euthanasia technician (or C.A.T. – oh, the irony!) at an animal shelter, is accused of murdering six of her co-workers by drugging them and dragging them into the gas chamber. This happens fairly early in the novel, with the remainder focusing on Tory’s experiences with the judicial system and the psychiatric hospital in which she is confined.

And that right there is one of the problems with this book. For this to be touted on the cover as “a novel of suspense,” there’s precious little of that to be found. Will she be found insane? Maybe. Will she be found guilty in court? Well, she did admit to murdering six people; I’m no lawyer, but we’re in no-brainer territory here. The only bit of suspense left to the reader is trying to figure out what the big M. Night Shyamalan twist – as trumpeted on the back cover – might be. Yeah, I went there. I referenced M. Night. And anyone who sat through THE VILLAGE only to sit gobsmacked and mutter “That? That’s the twist?” probably knows what I’m talking about.

Oh, and one more thing: The book is written almost entirely in dialogue, with the only exceptions being a prose prologue and epilogue and a few short stories “written” by Tory. Consider yourself warned.

It’s not that Spignesi is a bad writer; on the contrary, he shows quite a bit of promise in the short stories, and he obviously isn’t afraid of dialogue. The problem lies in the plotting. Upon finishing the book, it’s obvious what type of impact he was going for, but while in the midst of reading, it feels like he blew his literary load a little too early. After the climactic murder scene, there’s no question about anything. Yes, she did it. Yes, she admitted to it. Throwing the short stories into the mix to illuminate her character almost brings the flow of the novel to a screeching halt. They serve their purpose, but at the expense of the novel’s minimal momentum.

What carries the reader through this novel is curiosity about why Tory did it. Will there be a big revelation on her death bed? What’s the shocking twist? Were the murders committed by water-fearing aliens who terrorize the village and see dead people?

Unfortunately, the real ending is telegraphed fairly early on in the book, and I’m not even particularly intuitive when it comes to these kinds of things. I figured it out, thought, “No … surely he’s not going that route!” and then – bam! – the final chapter said, “Yes, we are … and stop calling me Shirley!” It’s an excruciatingly unsatisfying ending, made worse because Spignesi had such a promising start. Maybe by his next book, he’ll have a handle on this whole “fiction” thing and live up to his potential. –Rebecca Brock

Buy it at Amazon.
Discuss it in our forums.