I just finished J. F. Englert's 'A Dog Among Diplomats', and I'm not sure what to say. He obviously put a lot of work into it... well, some work. I want to be nice, but my momma always told me to tell the truth. The first book 'A Dog About Town' was pretty good. This one is a prime example of 'second book syndrome.' OK, he spent years getting the first book out, and it was good, and it did well, and the publisher pressured him to get the next one out while his brief candle of fame still flickered. I get it. He should have had a bit more sense, and taken as much time as the book really needed. Like it's protagonist and alleged author, it is bloated, wordy and distracted. The plot mechanics audibly creak.

Now I'm perfectly willing to suspend disbelief, after all I love the Sci-Fi channel. But the fourth or fifth time Englert presents a character who knows what he couldn't possibly know, I can't help but groan.

Unlike the Greeks, with their Deus Ex Machina plot device where some character (or God) swoops in and solves all the plot problems, Englert uses an absent character to pull the reader from plot point to plot point and book to book.

You feel like this one is just the middle part of a trilogy, or whatever-ogy, and it's reason for being was to get from here to there. The long way. Now Stirling does the same thing, but he really tells a story along the way. And Parker has three whole series going, but each book is complete and can be read out of sequence with complete enjoyment. Obviously, the context of all the other books makes the current one more delicious, yet each book stands alone and you could start each series anywhere. There are so many good to great authors that Englert could have learned from....

Now, it's not a BAD book. If you enjoyed the first book and want to see how the storyline pans out in the next one, you'll have to read it. Having read this far, I'll probably read the next one in the hope it's better.