No Regrets, Coyote: A Novel
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. --Connie Fletcher