Lessons for Sleeping Dogs

Lessons for Sleeping Dogs (2015) Charlie Cochrane (Cambridge Fellows)

Set in England in 1921

Jonty and Orlando are asked to look into what seems to have been a double suicide–a man who suffered debilitating paralysis and the doctor who treated him.

The case touches on two things neither much wants to discuss: the war, and their relationship.

“You said that your brother was nice enough, on the surface. What lay beneath?”

“An unhealthy interest in men. Especially in young men.” Charles made a face, a clear expression of disgust.

So the conversation had arrived there; the place he and Jonty always wanted to avoid. Orlando took a deep breath before firing off his next question. “An unhealthy interest in young men? A romantic interest?”

“Precisely that. If grown men want to indulge in that vile stuff in the privacy of their own homes, that’s up to them, but when it involves those of a younger age, it’s nothing more than coercion as far as I’m concerned.”

“I was told he came home from France with neurasthenia.”

“You don’t need to use that term, Orlando.”

Orlando winced.

“We both know you mean shell shock. He returned home with it four years ago. He got better, but he was never the same as he’d been back in 1914, even though he’d not taken part in the fighting. He saw enough carnage in the field hospitals to upset the strongest stomach, doctor or not. That’s why he hated to see any suffering. He’d seen too much of it, knew too well what some of his patients went through.”

This story was a bit all over the place, and pulled in all kinds of elements, and it mostly left me confused.

Publisher: Lume Books

Rating: 6/10

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