Eyes in the Night - 1942

*My review of the book The Last Express by Baynard Kendrick. 

I was interested in reading this after seeing a movie called Eyes in the Night. It's also based on the character that was the subject of this book. I really enjoyed that movie, and I wanted to see what it would be like to read one of the stories.

Duncan Maclain is a blind detective who uses a seeing eye dog and his best friend to solve mysteries. In this case, one of Duncan's friends is accused of murder, and the evidence to put away a criminal goes missing after a grenade is thrown into the backseat of a man's car.

The thing I loved the most about the movie was the dog. Of course, I was impressed with the way Duncan and his companions worked together, but watching the dog performing the work added so much. In the book, Duncan had two working dogs, Schnucke and Dreist. One did the normal seeing eye duties while the other one was more of a protective animal.

In this case, while the book was very clever and unique, it wasn't quite better than the movie. It's not the same story, but even though Eyes in the Night was made in 1942, I loved it. Special shout out to the working dog in that movie, Friday, who did some amazing things. I'm a dog person, so maybe that swayed me. The book didn't seem to rely on the dogs as much as the movie did, and I missed that. Maybe some of the other books with Maclain have more dog involvement, but this one didn't quite hit the mark for me. I may try another one in the future, because I'd like to give this character another chance.