Good book wanders a bit and the ending leads you to believe the book will be part of a series. If you have read Louisiana Power and Light, also by this author you will enjoy this book, otherwise the style may be a little confusing at first. ( )

No Regrets, Coyote by John Dufresne was very disappointing to me. I love mysteries and black comedy. I thought that an investigator with the name of “Wylie Coyote” Melville would be entertaining. There were snatches of fun here and there but on the whole I was let down. I think the rating should actually be a 2.5 because there were some enjoyable characters in this book.

The positive of this book for me are the two characters. Wylie’s dad who has Alzheimer’s disease and was acting out in weird ways, sometimes he was funny sometimes pathetic. I suspect that his behavior was the same in his life before but now was exaggerated. It was also very sad because at times he realized that he was losing himself. A pet given to Wylie in this book was a cute, rambunctious kitten named Djangle. Whenever I read about those two, I felt continuing to read this book. I liked those characters more than the two mysteries in this book.

There were many twists so that is another positive. I did not figure out who the murders were. In fact, I was completely fooled so that is a positive to this book.

There were many negatives for me. I wasn’t familiar with the Wylie character who was both a therapist and a forensic investigator before. This is one of a whole series of Wylie Coyote books. I knew that it was going to be gritty but some the scenes which were very vivid left with a very bad feeling about the main character. I questioned his sense of judgment and his morality. In other words, I would not like to have a friend similar to this character. I did like that Wylie took care with his father and tried to have a relationship with him. His patience seemed boundless with him but that was not enough for me to enjoy this book. I finished reading this book feeling that the main stories were deeply disturbing.

I hesitate to recommend this book because of the violent scenes that left me feeling mad at the author, it think that you have to decide for yourself if you want to read it. I know that I will not be reading another John Dufresne book. It may just be that you will like it; I know that it is not for me.

I received this book as a win from FirstReads and that did not influence any part of my review. ( )

Wylie Melville is a therapist in Eden, Florida who helps out the police as a consultant by reading crime scenes. After a particularly gruesome scene involving a family murdered on Christmas Eve Wylie can’t let it go, even after the investigation is closed.

Wylie draws the wrath of the local police after reporting a crooked cop for stealing a watch at the crime scene, and also for not backing off. He values honesty and integrity and is surrounded by the opposite. “Does anyone tell the truth anymore?” he asks himself. He’s unfortunate enough to live in “the most corrupt county in the state, maybe the country.” There’s so much death and violence in Eden, that even reference librarians are jaded.

Wylie’s luck is such that when he comments on a criminal’s revolting cologne, a case of it shows up on his doorstep. And not even the real scent, a flea-market imitation of a bad cologne.

In keeping Wylie’s status as a hyper-observer, No Regrets, Coyote is packed with vivid detail. Nothing goes unobserved. The story is carried along on a wave of detail that keeps things alive and appealing.

Dufresne has a firm grasp of contemporary South Florida and its cultural mush. Much of the humor in the story comes from the telling detail of how people live, interact, dress and act these days in Florida. He also has a knack for creating unusual names: Chaffin Halliday, Doody, Bay Levette, Lincoln Clockedile, and my favorite, Clete Meatyard, are among a few.

No Regrets, Coyote is engaging, humorous and meaningful all the way through, which isn’t easy to pull off. ( )

I love it when literary fiction writers try other genres. 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 knew John Dufresne’s reputation, but hadn’t gotten around to reading any of his literary novels before I read this novel. When I previewed the first chapter online, I thought his foray into the crime/suspense genre would be an entertaining read. 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. Wylie is a therapist but he’s called in to investigate the scene because the local police rely on his exceptional powers of observation. 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. 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. After that razzle dazzle opening, you expect Wylie to slowly start to unravel the mystery. But over the next two thirds of the novel, we get very little detail about the Halliday murder. Instead, the characters in Wylie’s world keep getting introduced to us in what starts to feel like an onslaught. 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. 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. It’s nice to round out the “detective’s” personal life so that we get to know him about him as person. But the parade of characters in Wylie’s life won’t stop coming. We are introduced to several of his patients, a homeless man who starts camping out in his backyard, his ex-wife, his ex-girlfriend whom he still loves but who has since remarried even though she and Wylie remain close friends. Maybe even all that is fine, as one of those characters ends up playing a key role in the ultimate unraveling of the story. But then we also have to learn about everyone else who crosses Wylie’s path. Wylie and his best pal spend a lot of time in bars and coffees shops, and I practically groaned every time they were in one because we had to get a capsulized personal history of the bartender, the waitress, and every regular patron Wylie knew. You really do need a scorecard to keep track of the characters and I actually started keeping notes in the end pages, just to try to remembers all these different characters – and Dufresne makes it even more difficult by giving them similar names – his sister is Venise and one of his patients is Cerise. I got so bored with these endless character sketches that many times I was tempted to give up on the novel because it didn’t seem like any more details on the central mystery would be forthcoming. While he’s a good enough writer to make these mini-biographies of characters interesting, they incredibly bogged the pacing and plotting of the story. It isn’t until about two thirds of the way in – around page 220 of a 325 page novel – that things turns full-scale back to the original mystery – and then things do get interesting. Still I was a bit shocked, because while the opening scene was brutal with young children having been shot execution-style, the violence in the last section of the novel has an over-the-top Brian DePalma-esque goriness. Also, in the final sections and particularly in the final 50 pages or so, so much happens all at once, it feels like the novel is trying to sprint its way to the finish line to make up ground for how slow and deliberate it was over the first two thirds. In the end, I was glad I finished it, but boy in those early sections it was a chore to keep coming back to. ( )

I was kind of up and down on this one. A forensic consultant is called in by the Everglades County police to help unravel a crime scene. Nothing of course is what it appears to be and the investigation goes South. The book had a good core storyline, but it constantly digressed into overly detailed descriptions and antics of side characters. Sometimes I felt the main storyline was secondary to the ancillary hijinks. The story was saved about two thirds of the way through the book, when the action returned with a bang. From that point it flowed smoothly to the end. I have to give the author credit for the most imaginatively named characters I have run across in some time. You certainly won't find any John Smiths or Sam Jones here. Book provided for review by Goodreads. ( )