No Regrets, Coyote

May 6, 2013
The Eden, Fla., police believe that Chafin Halliday slaughtered his wife and three young children before killing himself in this absorbing if at times frustrating noir from Dufresne (Louisiana Power & Light). However, therapist Wylie “Coyote” Melville, a volunteer forensic consultant, thinks the supposed murder/suicide looks staged. He also has his doubts about the typed note Halliday left at the scene. Distracted by his own family’s emotional troubles, Wylie is too unfocused to deal with Eden’s escalating tangle of police corruption or to realize how close to its center he is. Lauded as a man of keen insight, Wylie knows something is seriously wrong, but is unaware that he’s become a pawn in a game he no longer understands. His inability to apply his analytic skills to himself is plausible, as is the ease with which those around him steer him for their own benefit, but the result is a story ever so slightly out of focus. Agent: Richard P. McDonough, Richard P. McDonough Literary Agency.

June 15, 2013
An ambling thriller about a suspicious murder-suicide that never meets a diversion it doesn't like. Wittingly or not, Wylie "Coyote" Melville, unofficial Everglades County crime consultant, may suggest a reader's initial response to this latest from Dufresne when he says, "[a] lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety." Melville's wide-ranging and loosely structured narrative, which looks like a series launch, won't exactly cause a reader anxiety. In fact, this appealing raconteur's keen observations and dry, sometimes mordant sense of humor consistently divert. But that also means a reader can't always discern what the book wants to be about. Like Coyote, a busy therapist who, because of his attention to detail and behavior ("I read faces and furniture"), can just about divine a culprit, the book wears many hats. Ostensibly, the plot is about a Christmas Eve shootout in which a father takes out his wife, his three children and then himself. Police are quick to rule the tragedy a murder-suicide, but too much about the case nags at Coyote. His ensuing investigation ranges far and wide and takes many side trips. There are, for example, Coyote's no-nonsense, advice-filled therapy sessions. There are Coyote's meetings with friend Bay Lettique, a devilish magician who can slice a banana with a card tossed from 10 feet. And there are Coyote's dinners with his sister and brother-in-law, who suffers gout. Throughout, Coyote's sharp-eyed narration and quick takes on behavior amuse. "He looked like a Cal or a Kim," Coyote says of a man in a bar whose "short blond hair was combed forward and rose to a quiff like the Gerber baby's." Eventually, Dufresne gathers some nasty police officers, Coyote, Bay and some others and packs them off to Alaska for a solid chase scene and a denouement that, however predictable, is no less potent. A ride on a local that's more fun than some others on an express.

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May 1, 2013
Dufresne's second crime novel (after Louisiana Power and Light, 1994) is another offbeat tour through the South (this time, Florida). The narrator-sleuth has the cringe-inducing name Wylie Coyote Melville. The premise hangs on Coyote's supposed ability to read crime scenes at a glance; a detective sergeant within the Eden Police Department invites Coyote to look at and return to scenes, though Coyote is not a cop; he's a therapist. The problem is that Coyote demonstrates very little of this intriguing skill; we get one scene in which he plays Holmes analyzing a room, but the rest we take on faith. The mystery here is that of a supposed murder-suicide, in which a wealthy restaurant owner apparently killed his wife and kids before turning the gun on himself. Coyote has a sense that the man was also a victim, and his search for the killer expands into the Florida underworld. A solid mystery and a provocative narrative voice make up for insufficient evidence of this forensic consultant's skills.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)