![]() But then we also meet Wylie’s family – his high-strung overweight sister, her slim brilliant, but unambitious husband and his Alzheimer’s-stricken father. From the outset we know his two best friends are a police detective and a professional poker player and magician with intimate knowledge of the Florida underworld. Instead, the characters in Wylie’s world keep getting introduced to us in what starts to feel like an onslaught. But over the next two thirds of the novel, we get very little detail about the Halliday murder. After that razzle dazzle opening, you expect Wylie to slowly start to unravel the mystery. I immediately liked the idea of the sleuth with the non-conventional occupation, which I know has become a fairly common practice now in detective novels. Wylie immediately suspects all is not as it seems, and the details of the crime scene do not indicate the husband was a man planning to end his life on this Christmas eve. ![]() Wylie is a therapist but he’s called in to investigate the scene because the local police rely on his exceptional powers of observation. ![]() The first chapter certainly grabs you by the lapels and makes you feel like you’re in for a suspenseful ride as Wylie “Coyote” Melville visits a crime scene in which a restaurateur, Chafin Halliday murdered his wife and young children and then killed himself. When I previewed the first chapter online, I thought his foray into the crime/suspense genre would be an entertaining read. I knew John Dufresne’s reputation, but hadn’t gotten around to reading any of his literary novels before I read this novel. Last year, one of my favorite novels was The Three-Day Affair, a great crime novel by Michael Kardos, whose previous book was a collection of literary short stories. I love it when literary fiction writers try other genres.
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