Teeth of the Dog is set is nothing if not lively. A Third World hash of shantytowns, strip clubs, bored hustlers, and uncertain electricity, Vanduu is abuzz not only with native lore and jarringly inescapable disco music but also with the unsettling palpitations of intrigue. In her fourth novel, Jill Ciment deftly weaves a tale of love and suspense into her colorful rendering of Vanduuan life, creating a story as tense as it is atmospheric. American vacationers Thomas and Helene Strauss, finding themselves underwhelmed by island amenities, spend much of the novel's first half glumly acknowledging the faltering trajectory of their marriage. Helene, years younger than her once-eminent anthropologist husband, has dragged him to this tourist-unfriendly backwater to--metaphorically and literally--get a rise out of him, prostate cancer having left him both world-weary and impotent. When Thomas suffers tragedy, and a dissolute American named Adam Finster preys on Helene's discontents, she's pitched into the sprawling and chaotic world of Vanduu with only her wits and Finster's help--perhaps--to save her. "New world devours old," Finster recalls from Vanduuan lore. "The foam is the mark of its voracious appetite. Teeth of the dog, the natives call it." Moments like these, when Ciment depicts the jostling of cultures, are nearly as much fun as watching Helene try to transmute desperation, deciphering a world she'd rather not have visited. Brisk, lush, and mildly suspenseful, Teeth of the Dog, while something short of a thriller, nonetheless reveals a fascinating world as rich in danger as it is in uncertainty. --Ben Guterson
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