High Season

Having grown up on hard boiled detectives, I expect my heros to be 2 parts Sam Spade, 2 parts Harry Callahan and 1 part Sherlock Holmes. However, Frank Coffin isn't any part of those characters. Instead, he is a realistic depiction of someone who has lived a tough life doing a tough job. Coffin has a "history" that dates back to his days on Baltimore, PD. At crime scenes, he has flashbacks and panic atacks every time he investigates a new victim. Although this behavior might make you think he is weak, actually, it makes him perfectly human. In fact, I don't think I would want to know someone who could look at a murder victim and not be sickened. But for me, the main character in the story, and the reason I read it in the first place, is not Frank Coffin. It is actually (in my mind) the town where the action takes place - Provincetown, MA. Having vacationed at the Cape for over 20 years, I think the author has captured the spirit and character of the locals very well. He makes it perfectly plausable that there would be tension between the real estate developers and the old time residents. Over the 20 years we have been going there, P'Town had evolved, and not necessarily for the better. Like Donna Leon's books centered in Venice, Italy and Chris Grabenstein's books written with a New Jersey Shore flavor, Loomis has delivered an excellent novel that provides a well written story with a wonderful sense of place (my favorite type of mystery). If you like crisp writing, a good plot, 3 dimentional characters and more than a few plot twists, you will enjoy High Season.

From 1970 to 1980 I owned a house with four apartments in Provincetown. Before that and up to this day I still think of P'Town as my favorite town in the world and visit it as often as possible. I try to read books that feature the town. So it was that I read "High Season" by Jon Loomis. He has caught the flavor and the character of the town better than a number of other writers who have tried to encapsulate it. He uses some real places and some easily recognizable fictional places as well as recycling a lot of actual familiar town family names. There are a lot of laughs in the book. In this mystery he creates interesting and eccentric characters, has a smooth, no-nonsense narrative style, and knows how to engage his readers and tell a good story. The police detective protagonist Frank Coffin seems real and believable because he has flaws and foibles as do his cast of characters. A series of murders keeps the reader and Coffin off balance. Here's a character talking about Coffin: "He's a nonlinear thinker--jumps around from A to R to Z and back to F until he gets the whole picture. It works, but it's like watching a bear peeling a grape." An influx of guppies and yuppies have tried to gentrify what is a unique bit of Americana. P"town has suffered from over development. This becomes a major element in the story. The backdrop of the story involves a group of pro-development vultures. But the plot calls for a level of suspension of disbelief that is beyond the pale; the ending, however, is very suspenseful and exciting with two separate villains and three people figuratively tied to the tracks. It's a fun ride with a great town faithfully portrayed in the foreground.

I couldn't put this book down - great story line(s). It kept me captivated. Well worth the read for a first time writer of fiction.

The first installment in the Coffin series, this book was delightfully entertaining. Loomis fleshes out his characters not only with uniquely hilarious detail, but humanizes them through the comforting realities of their morose and often psychotic tendencies. With moral concepts pleasantly askew, it becomes difficult to truly dislike any members of p-town's estranged population - a perfect formula for mystery in this fast paced who done it style tale of tall ships, sex, money and... lobster racing? A revitalizing first addition to an increasingly overly serious genre, this book is often more than just a fun read, subtly employing the aesthetic skill apparent in the author's previously published books of poetry. One can hardly wait to see what myriad of trouble coffin will be infiltrating next. edit: I couldn't help but read this book a second time. Good replay value.

There's nothing like a mystery with a strong sense of place. Jon Loomis' High Season, set in Provincetown, manages to feature both the town and Frank Coffin as its two main characters. Coffin, a cop and the main character, both belongs and doesn't belong in Provincetown. As protaganists in police procedurals go, he's as engaging as they come. And Provincetown, which I have never visited, comes across as a vibrant and complicated city on the verge of many changes. While Loomis' mystery is set in the location of Provincetown, the motivation for the crime committed in this novel will resonate for readers throughout the United States. If I say more, I'll give it away. Like Carl Hiaasen, Loomis takes a unique location and digs up its dirt. I stayed up late to finish this novel, which I don't do much anymore. But when I finished, I was sorry to see it end. I'd grown quite attached to Coffin, to his coworker, Lola, and to the nefarious Uncle Rudy who was always lying in the weeds.