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Cattle rancher and part-time tribal investigator Charlie Moon has the uncanny ability to put a crime scene together before seeing it with accurate results, much to the chagrin of his best friend, Granite Creek Chief of Police Scott Parris. But Moon comes in handy whenever Parris gets stumped on a case—and one such case involves Wanda Naranjo.
Panicking because her pregnant daughter, Betty, hasn’t returned from a doctor’s appointment, Wanda calls Charlie Moon. Wanda suspects that her no good ex-boyfriend, Michael Kauffmann, might be the father of her sixteen-year-old daughter’s child, but Betty has remained mum on the subject. Wanda plans to find out—one way or another.
As Betty remains missing, suspects pop up all over the place, and Moon begins to fear that they’ll never find her alive. The only clues they have involve a dead cemetery employee and a mysterious man who claims that a child in the apartment above him keeps him awake with its crying at night.
Coffin Man is written from an omniscient point of view, but it’s so well done that you’ll never get confused. Instead, you’ll be highly entertained by the many different, and often hilarious, thoughts going through each character’s head.
Despite the all-knowing viewpoint, each character develops into a unique individual, allowing the reader to know and love each one. Charlie Moon is reserved and intelligent, Scott Parris is sarcastic and funny, and Charlie’s great-aunt Daisy Perika (a Southern Ute Tribal Elder who sees ghosts) is feisty and hilarious (I loved her!). And those are just the main characters.
The mystery itself is totally different from anything I’ve read before. Oh, you still have the missing person and whatnot, but Coffin Man takes a sharp turn toward the bizarre—but it’s a good kind of weird. Everything is right there for you to put together and solve the mystery, but you’ll never be able to do it. I absolutely loved how everything comes together in the end—it’s so very clever!
I don’t think I’ve read a mystery with such a unique plot, with such engaging characters, and with such wit in a long time. Coffin Man has all that and much more. Please, someone, point me toward more Charlie Moon mysteries!
