Review: Werewolf: The True Story of an Extraordinary Police Dog

Werewolf: The True Story of an Extraordinary Police Dog by David Alton Hedges
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Narrated by Michael Puttonen
Presented by Post Hypnotic Press Audiobooks

I think I would have liked this more with a different narrator, but it was an okay listen for a freebie.

This is the true story of Police dog, Brag, and his handler. The author starts with the beginning of their relationship, and how things were rocky at first, but eventually the two developed a close working partnership, which did of course graduate to friendship.

The relationship between dog and handler was sweet, though it was hard for me to imagine such a fierce, cold dog. Brag is tough, arrogant, and clinical in his work. It was quite fascinating listening to the different anecdotes about how a dog fits in with police work, but it was hard to get to like this dog in the beginning.

That said, there's a lot more to being part of a K9 unit than I suspected, and I did get a quiet joy out of knowing these dogs are out there biting bad guys.

There was a great balance of police work and details of the relationship between the two. I found the author's behaviour questionable at times, but the pair seemed to suit each other quite well. The structure of the story was clever and followed a logical progression.

The narration really didn't work for me. He seemed to inject feeling and emotion that didn't match the words, and I found myself thinking about how I would have read it different. I was frustrated with how it kept pulling me out of the story. It's also a bit of a weird complaint, but with this being an autobiography I found it frustrating that the voice didn't really match the person I envisioned. Basically, the story sounded much more hardcore than the guy telling the story. Sorry!

Overall, though, it was an interesting listen. It's not the kind of book I would normally pick up for myself, so I'm glad it was a 'listen now', otherwise I probably wouldn't have bothered.

With thanks to NetGalley for an audio ARC

View all my reviews