Review: Tall Wolf is gonna love Alaska
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 26, 2013
Joseph Flynn has written BIA special agent John Tall Wolf into a particularly binding corner. John has made his BIA boss agree he will never have to go to a reservation to work. Considering that precludes an enormous amount of real-estate and some interesting plotting possibilities; the only place the subtly malicious BIA director can send him is Alaska. There are no reservations there, except a small one, Metlakatla, I think.John suspects his boss is Coyote. The Trickster has a mean streak.  She's been bested by him one too many times and she is royally ticked off. The end of this book puts him out of her sphere of influence pretty well. Marlene wasn't a worthwhile adversary for John. He was always a step or two ahead of her, and saw through her. But she's still Director. What better way to get revenge on John than to send him to Alaska where the sun glinting off snow will cause his light-sensitive eyes real agonizing pain.I gave this book four stars although it required a huge willings suspension of disbelief on my part. John is called in on a bank robbery because the robbers were dressed as Indians. They even got away on Indian Motorcycles. Even before he proved it, he was pretty sure the men were not Native American. When that was proved true, John and his RayBans should have been off the case. But the FBI, a Postal Inspector, and a collection paranoid alphabet agencies are all involved and somehow, John is still considered important to solving the case.It was a good who dunnit. I didn't see most of the plot points coming, and adding the extra of the bad guys being tied to a sport was especially interesting. The show down in a stadium was one of my favorites of all time.The reason for only 4 stars was because one of the bad guys in the conspiracy seemed to be tossed into the story arc for no reason other to hint at international intrigue. He didn't even have a line of dialogue. A shadowy, disgruntled Chinese guy, intimating international terrorism. This book would have been just fine without him.This is a good read though. I like John Tall Wolf and his backstory is really good. But that pesky reservation phobia is a bit irritating when it belongs to a 6 foot 6 inch Indian who wears RayBans and looks as really bad A** as he truly is.