DARIEN DOGS' DUST JACKET makes grand claims. It claims the book's portrayal of washed-up Westerners adrift in the developing world has "echoes of Graham Greene with an imaginative depth, an erotic, muscular charge and a dark, compulsive energy all its own".
A bold statement and, alas, one Darien Dogs does little to justify.
Jim Rogers has made a mess of his life, and sees in a dubious Panamanian deal the chance to salvage it. In a sense it's a story about redemption, but without Greene's spiritual conception of the world the potential redemption lacks grandeur, which also saps the story's more sordid elements of their savour.
In place of any grand vision of virtue and vice, all that is offered are competent but unremarkable accounts of unspoilt tropical islands and greedy developers. Indeed, there is a tendency towards lazy stereotyping which one assumes is the narrators, but is never adequately confronted.
The other four stories included alongside the eponymous novella are further evidence that, while Shukman can write serviceable descriptions of exotic locations, and might succeed as a travel writer, his fiction lacks power.
Darien Dogs by Henry Shukman is published in hardback by Jonathan Cape, priced £12.99.
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