John Dufresne's (Love Warps the Mind a Little) fiction is filled with story-telling misfits in the tradition of Faulkner, O'Connor and Toole. In No Regrets, Coyote, he extends his reach into Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey turf with a Florida crime novel swarming with crooked cops, Russian thugs, Mafia lawyers and a naïve but dogged therapist who untangles the messy corruption... and more or less rights the wrongs.
In Melancholy, Fla., Wylie "Coyote" Melville runs a one-man therapy practice with a short list of very troubled clients. Wylie is a mess: divorced and living alone in an eerily empty house after the death of his beloved cat, Satchel. His almost clairvoyant ability to see behind appearances leads to his occasional retention by the local police to take a second look at particularly befuddling crime scenes. Called in on what seems a simple family murder-suicide, his instincts tell him there is more to the story, and he's proven right.
Dufresne's cast of villains and weirdos is both funny and frightening. The mobbed-up cops are "heavy set guys in Dockers with buzz cuts and brushy mustaches, wearing their polo shirts a size too small, trash-talking about the Dolphins, and arm wrestling." A dead victim's wallet tells a life story: "He shops at Winn-Dixie, flies Delta, has just one more hot dog to buy at 'Wiener Takes All' before he gets a free one."
If No Regrets, Coyote sometimes gets a little overwhelming, it may be because Dufresne has so thoroughly embraced the eccentric exuberance of the South. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.