No Regrets, Coyote: A Novel

by John Dufresne

Overview

“A very cool ride. If Raymond Chandler was reincarnated as a novelist in South Florida, he couldn’t nail it any better than Dufresne.”—Carl Hiaasen

On Christmas Eve in Eden, Florida, Wylie “Coyote” Melville, therapist and forensic consultant, is summoned to a horrific crime scene. Five members of the Halliday family have been brutally killed. Wylie’s rare talent is an ability to read a crime scene, consider the evidence seen and unseen, and determine what’s likely to have happened. The police are soon convinced that the deaths were a murder-suicide carried out by a broken and desperate Chafin Halliday, but Wylie’s not so sure.

As Wylie begins his own investigation with the help of his friend Bay Lettique—a poker-playing sleight-of-hand artist with links to the Everglades County underworld—he discovers a web of corruption involving the police union, Ponzi-scheming lawyers, county politicians, and the Russian mob. What follows is a heart-stopping, edgy novel that introduces a completely original crime solver.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393348927
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/02/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John Dufresne is the author of twenty-five works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including Louisiana Power and Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little. He lives in Florida, where he teaches writing at Florida International University.

Editorial Reviews

"Engrossing crime drama from a gifted writer, No Regrets, Coyote will please readers of all tastes with its compelling storytelling, fascinating and often funny hero, and beautiful prose."

Michael Koryta

"Ghoulishly funny. . . . Dufresne is an original talent."

Marilyn Stasio

"A novel so good you want to throw a party for it. It’s tense, unnerving, fearless, and funny as hell. Beautifully rendered on every page, it may be a crime novel in name but it’s literature for the ages."

Dennis Lehane

"Takes noir fiction and slivers it with shards of humor, ironic insight, and an almost hallucinogenic specificity. This is lean and honest storytelling that is as moving as it is engaging. Read this book. Believe me, you'll have no regrets!"

Andre Dubus III

"Touching, nervy, richly detailed, and populated with a cast of characters who are utterly unique and terrifyingly real. Its humor is abundant and warm-hearted, and its detective hero is unlike any we've ever met before. American crime fiction has just gotten a lot more interesting."

James W. Hall

"No matter how sad, ridiculous, terrifying, poignant, goofy, or heroic a particular passage, Dufresne seems to be having the time of his life."

Cleveland Plain Dealer

"John Dufresne has created a unique and compelling sleuth in Wylie “Coyote” Melville. His quirky adventures will keep you reading."

James O. Born

"Marvelous."

Boston Globe

…[a] ghoulishly funny crime novel…Dufresne is an original talent. His humor is frightfully dark, but it's also quite dazzling—even by the exacting standards of South Florida crime fiction.

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

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. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"No Regrets, Coyote is a very cool ride. If Raymond Chandler was reincarnated as a novelist in South Florida, he couldn't nail it any better than John Dusfrene."

Carl Hiaasen

"Fantastic, very sharp, very wry."

Tampa Bay Times - Laura Lee Smith

"Get ready to read this one twice, people—once to see what happens, and again to savor the sentences. Here American treasure John Dufresne has written a noir, but instead of playing by the rules of noir, he makes noir play by the Rules of Dufresne. And we are the beneficaries. So sit back, put a cooler of beer by your chair, and settle in, you'll be here awhile: No Regrets, Coyote is impossible to close."

Tom Franklin

"No Regrets, Coyote is the total package—beautifully written, filled with unexpected twists, driven by crisp and edgy dialogue. The reader’s happy dilemma is whether to savor the prose or tear through the pages. Nelson DeMille meets Carl Hiassan, and the result (like the ending) is totally satisfying."

James Grippando

"The ordinary crime novel narrows as it goes, the possibilities limited by deductive reasoning. But John Dufresne's No Regrets, Coyote is an extraordinary novel, expanding until anything seems possible and everyone connects. Steeped in place, wholly original, it is, line-by-line, one of the best books I've read in a long time."

Laura Lippman

"Genuinely funny, genuinely suspenseful crime novels are rare, but No Regrets, Coyote succeeds on both counts. John Dufresne's hilariously dark vision of South Florida brings to mind the work of such masters as Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard. It's a lurid pleasure from beginning to end."

Tom Perrotta

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.

Kirkus Reviews