Conscience of the Beagle by Patricia Anthony

I look back, but can’t see the other cab. Better than I expected, the undercover God’s Warriors. And Vanderslice is more deadly than I’d ever believed. The door opens darkened living room. Beagle’s standing by a lamp in the den. You look like shit. I collapse into an overstuffed chair. Beagle brings me iced water and a white tablet. He sits and watches me take it. I got the pattern, he says. It’s all centered around Paulie Hendrix. My hand’s shaking too much.

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Start by marking Conscience of the Beagle as Want to Read: Want to Read savin. ant to Read.

About book: Major Dyle Halloway is investigating a series of terrorist attacks on the planet Tennyson. But his obsession with the brutal murder of his wife is endangering him and his entire team. Only Beagle, an android with the mind of a dead investigative genius, knows the truth-about both cases. From the author of Brother Termite. Other books by Mystery & Thriller.

Terrorists are loose on TennysonEarth has sent its toughest cop to the planet Tennyson to uncover who is behind the terrorist attacks. None of the evidence makes sense. Everything points to Tennyson’s government as the prime suspect in the bombings-and Major Dyle Holloway and his team are there at its invitation. Is Minister of Science Vanderslice really there to help, or does he have his own plan to catch the killers?But Holloway is still carrying a case with him, the brutal murder of his wife-the only case he never solved. Conscience of the Beagle Patricia Anthony. Terrorists are loose on Tennyson. Earth has sent its toughest cop to the planet Tennyson to uncover who is behind the terrorist attacks.

Conscience of the beagle. Publication date 1995.

Four top notch investigators are dispatched from earth to a peaceful colonial world to capture the terrorists responsible for a series of deadly attacks. The ideas are fresh and the feel is unique. The characters are well developed and the action moves along at a good pace. The author does have a problem however with sentence/paragraph structure and as a result the prose comes off as jerky and confusing

It was my first experience with a Patricia Anthony book, but I'm fairly well read in science fiction overall. If you're looking for some good ol' comfy sci-fi reading with a couple big plot twists to spice up the read, this book is a great place to start - at 240 pages, it's a quick read. Holloway is haunted and sad. Beagle - an enigma to all but himself. Who killed Holloway's wife? What force is behind the revolution on Tennyson?

Anthony's meteoric rise to the novelistic front ranks is thoroughly deserved. Major Dyle Holloway and his team-Szabo the psychic, demolitions expert Arne, and the humanoid robot Beagle-are sent by Home Force of Earth to planet Tennyson, a religious dictatorship now enduring a series of terrorist bombings in which prominent scientists and dissidents have been killed. Handicapped by guilt over his failure to solve the murder of his wife, Lila, Holloway is further inhibited by knowing that one of his team is a spy; neither does he trust Vanderslice, Tennyson's Minister for Science.

Conscience of the Beagle is science fiction police noir. It certainly had all of the necessary noir tropes: rundown, has-been protagonists, gritty mean streets, some sort of corruption or conspiracy, and one or two women as empty plot devices rather than actual characters (protagonist can't move past dead relationship). Ugly people, ugly scenery, ugly imagery, ugly premise, ugly resolution, plus the stereotypes and cheap exploitation of women (yes, I know the author's a woman). And I suspect calling the android a beagle was a reference to Darwin and the theory of evolution. But while I could perhaps recognize the presence of allusions and metaphors, I wasn't able to interpret much of the symbolism. Someone who was able to connect all of the dots would probably have a deeper appreciation for this work.

Several of her short-fiction works were republished in the 1998 collection Eating Memories. Her 1998 mainstream novel Flanders is the highly metaphysical story of an American sharpshooter in World War I.