Since that time it has been Tory’s responsibility to euthanize all animals that have been at the shelter for more than a week. One Friday, the day on which the animals are euthanized, Tory snaps. She systematically sedates all of her coworkers and drags them into the gas chamber. She then operates as though the inhabitants of the room are her Friday batch of animals resulting in the deaths of six people.

Her action is quickly discovered by a part time employee who stopped by the shelter on an errand. Tory is then evaluated by a court appointed psychiatrist, Baraku Bexley, to determine if Tory was sane at the time she committed the murders.

The first problem Bexley encounters is that Tory freely admits her guilt. The second difficulty is that despite having talked with the young woman at length, she appears to be completely sane, and remembers all of her actions on that fateful Friday in detail. The third stumbling block is that she wants to plead guilty which will almost ensure a trip to the gas chamber herself.

Dialogues is, as its name implies, a book told almost entirely in the form of conversations between the principal characters in the novel. The reader is left to interpret the story, in its entirety, from words spoken by the protagonists or documents written by them. This unusual format gives the reader quite a different perspective on the plot, and, as the novel progresses, the validity of what is written on the page.

Because of the format, the book can be read rapidly, though the reader should be cautioned not to overlook seemingly irrelevant information. The complexities of the law as well as the state of mind of the characters are essential ingredients in this unusually written tale. The subject of animal euthanasia is a controversial one and may elicit some interesting discussions for a book club.

The main protagonist shows her training as a linguist in her analysis of the meaning of many seemingly common words included in the questions directed at her. Her sessions with Bexley as well as her examination by the attorneys in the courtroom force the reader to, perhaps, view these same words in a different light. Tory’s intelligence is a bright spot worthy of consideration in the novel.

Though the approach Mr. Spignesi has chosen to present his tale makes it ripe for a movie format, I’m not convinced the author had this in mind when he wrote the book. The book commences somewhat seductively with Tory working with the gas chamber and then shifts to conversations between Tory and Dr. Bexley. This introduction screams “movie” in my head, but as the novel progressed, I realized that there was something much more complex than a movie adaptation in the future for this story. Movies leave a little less to the imagination than this story deserves, Dialogues is one suspense novel that allows readers to make up their own minds.

--Andy Plonka