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HOUNDSTOOTH by Gary Alan Ruse

HOUNDSTOOTH

By

Pub Date: April 18th, 1975
Publisher: Prentice-Hall

An incredible canine caper -- actually a joint Army-Defense Department project -- in which a German Shepherd named Major, implanted with both a transceiver and a Computer Augmented Memory system, is satellited into Russia in order to safeguard a new laser-armed defense system (Cerberus) which the Soviets seem able to circumvent. The action -- no Kennel Rations, there's tons of it -- ranges from the superdog's training base in Missouri to NASA Control in Houston to Omsk, USSR, as the two countries' military and intelligence personnel frantically counterespionage each other a few hours before a crucial summit conference gets underway. Once in enemy territory, the pip-of-a-pup protagonist has to tangle with a Siberian timber wolf and reenter the Omsk Technical Institute to fulfill his mission -- namely, relaying the counter-Cerberus research back to the States via optic nerve impulses which are transmitted into images by a computer. Add to this a number of stock characters including a disapproving NASA administrator and a too-curious magazine reporter. . . then the discovery of a Soviet jamming station in the heart of Kansas. . . and . . . TV viewable fare a la Doberman Gang -- anything but lean as a hound's tooth.