Pony Girls

I had never heard of Richard Hoyt until a friend loaned me a copy of Pony Girls. Hoyt has the effrontery (and writing skills) to imagine an entire novel as his detective's initiation in to the shamanist world of animal spirits. He has imagined a trio of investigators who work together. They are Denson (or Owl), and Willie Sees the Night (definitely Coyote, we can hear him baying at night) and Denson's new girlfriend, Annie Dancer, a former FBI agent. And oops, we can't forget T, with whom Denson has enigmatic conversations in his mind-bending trips out of reality. Is T, Denson's creator, the Great Spirit as private detective author? Or is Denson imagining him. Yoiks! All this works, both as a hopping good mystery, but also as a genre-breaking exercise in the imagination. The subject here, besides the mystery who killed humans and horses, is the nature of evil. Is Evil the shape-changing Koonran, or are we all potential horse killers. As a bonus, Hoyt throws in almost everything we want to know about wild horses in the west.

As a private detective novel, Pony Girls is, uh, different. John Denson flies out of his skin in hallucinogenic surreal trips, sometimes meeting his creator, T, an author. Is T the Great Spirit as trickster? Denson's partner, Willie Sees the Night is a shaman. Is he really Coyote in human form? The new addition to the firm, ex-FBI agent Annie Dancer, Denson's girlfriend, is a computer whiz. The mystery: a killer of people and wild horses. In this fictional wormhole, logic and Native American mythology operate side by side. Denson and Annie find whales dying on a beach; a killer of horses and humans is on the loose. Is television reporter Erica von Bayer the killer? Or could it be her wealthy mother? Are they hosts to Koonran, the shape-changing beaver monster? This book, wild cubed, is not for the reader who wants a conventional private detective novel, but is highly recommended for those who like ideas, imaginative exploration of the human condition, and smooth writing.

Thirty-six sperm whales died on an isolated Oregon beach. Two months later, sixteen European jumping horses followed by twenty-two Spanish Mustangs are murdered in various atrocities. A group forms called the Ad Hoc Committee to Save the Spanish Mustang. They hire Portland, Oregon based private investigating partners John Denson, Annie Dancer, and Willie Sees the Night to learn who and why the horses are being slaughtered.The trio goes down their own paths trying to solve the mystery. Former reporter John seeks logical links even tying the dead horses back to the whale tragedy; ex-FBI agent Annie uses her information technology skills and links to look for serial killer patterns. Willie using hallucinatory drugs walks the out of body ethereal path of following the souls of the horses in their afterlife. As the threesome converges, evidence points towards the family of TV journalist Erika von Bayer, but which member and his or her motive remain unknown.Readers will have to expand their horizons to accept what is reality in this weird private investigative tale in which anything is possible in the Hoyt universe. The story line is fun to follow due to the strange sleuth partners. John tries to emulate Holmes; Annie applies profiling to identify an animal killer; while Willie is tripping on some other plane that perhaps the Amazing Randi might debunk or be convinced. To appreciate the center of weirdness theme inside and outside a fine who-done-it, readers will need to shelve reality, but it is worth the trip.Harriet Klausner