Jason Buhrmester's Black Dogs

From our initial encounter with Patrick Sullivan buying Black Sabbath albums, to a near escape from the Haven Street Pawnshop with a 58' Les Paul guitar in hand amidst flashing red and blue lights in the rearview, Black Dogs eases audiences into an entertaining journey with a ragtag team of four outcasts that have nothing to loose and everything to gain.

Jason Buhrmester's debut novel Black Dogs follows the Baltimore-born misfit crew of four; Patrick the ring leader, Alex, Keith, and Pete...or Frenchy, and their attempt to heist a speculated sum of $100,000 from major rock-band Led Zeppelin during a 1973 concert in New York City. The truth of the story: in July 1973 $203,000 of Led-Zeppelin's money did in fact go missing before a concert at New York City's Madison Square Garden, stolen from a safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel. The fiction of the story: everything else. As Black Dogs notes, this is the "possibly" true story of classic rock's greatest robbery, meaning that Patrick and his team perform a historically factually event through undocumented means.

Black Dogs gets off to a medium-paced start, and spends time setting up the crew before delving into the operation itself. Interestingly enough, for a quick 250 page read, Buhrmester's choice to spend time on character development as opposed to jumping immediately into the action serves the narrative well. Although centered primarily on the events surrounding Patrick (the novel's protagonist), one gains a transparent understanding of the three secondary characters comprising the other 75% of Patrick's crew through intense characterization taking place in the initial chapters. Simply put, Black Dogs is a character driven narrative with strong characterization supporting all four of its central characters.

While the plot of Black Dogs is nothing to write home about, and while the first thirty-five pages tend to drag, the narrative is almost certain to improve continually for all readers up to the final resolution with a consistent "one-upping" from one chapter to the next, and an attention retaining setup in what seems to be a literary version of The Sandlot meets Ocean's 11 plus a splash... or rather an entire cup of grittiness. Zeppelin fans are likely enjoy the narrative although they are not so likely to appreciate the protagonist's (or more directly, the author's) opinions of the band, and while classic rock fanatics are sure to understand and appreciate more of the rock-related allusions which Black Dogs hints at, the average reader won't miss out on the story even if a few punch-lines come across as confusing. Black Dogs is a fun read, and while it’s nothing more than a decent debut novel, it's sure to keep you entertained for a couple days.