Snake Eyes

While Richard Hoyt seems to me not quite in the leagues with James Hall, Michael Connelly, and Dennis Lehane, he can still captivate and entertain, and his books are always worth a look. Snake Eyes, like so many Elmore Leonard novels, is not really so much about who-done-it.... as much as it is about the characters and their observations on the situations in which they find themselves. In this book, two people are murdered and cattle are deliberately infected with anthrax--it doesn't take a genius to figure out from the very limited number of possibilities who is responsible, but along the way we have the delight of sharing the company of John Denison, who seems rather like a private eye from the beat or hippie generations. His Indian (Native American) partner Willy Prettybird doesn't play much of a role in this book except to set up the speculations on the Great Hoop of Life and do a bit of tracking that those redskins seem to do so well. It's not offensive, but it seemed to me to be the weak point of the book that Prettybird didn't play a larger role. There is almost no resemblance to Tony Hillerman's works, which fully engage one in the culture he writes about.If you like this one, I'd also recommend the other Richard Hoyt books, particularly Fish Story, Trotsky's Run, and Siskiyou. It's a shame his work is not more well known.