Customer Reviews

Coffin's Got the Dead Guy on the Inside

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

All Jason Keltner wants to do is get out of Pasadena by himself and work on composing some music, especially Untitled #23. But, with rent overdue, he agrees to watch his ex-friend Paul Reno to see what he's up to. After all, the money's not bad.

Paul is up to no good, as always. When Jason and Paul go to a party, their host falls down dead. Soon, goons are chasing the two of them; which isn't a good thing, considering Jason's beat up, almost classic car. Paul is obviously hiding something, and Jason just doesn't know who to trust. So, he enlists the help of his friends Robert and Martin. But are they in over their heads? And, if so, can they stay one step ahead of everyone who's after them?

First, the bad. This book just jumps in and never fully explains the relationships between some of the characters. I was confused for the first 30 pages or so as to who was who and why some characters were treating each other the way they were. Part of that is probably because this is the second in the series, but a little more background would have been nice.

However, once I got beyond those first 30 pages, I fell under the book's unique spell. The book was written exactly for my sarcastic, punny sense of humor, and I found myself laughing out loud at the banter between Jason, Mitch, and Robert. And the chicken wing/celery/ranch dressing debate is not to be missed. The plot starts a little slowly, but quickly picks up speed as the story progresses. While sometimes the characters seem to come too quickly, if you work at it, you can keep track of everyone and whose side they're really on.

This book requires a little extra concentration then many I normally read to keep everything straight, but it's completely worth it. Keith Snyder has earned himself a new fan, and I can't wait to catch up on Jason, Robert, and Mitch's other adventures.

Keith Snyder's Coffin has all the elements that make his work worth reading: great dialogue; believable characters that you either want to date or mother (at least if you're female!); a plot which moves along quickly, but never expectedly; and continued insight into that unknown-to-women realm of male friendships. An absolute delight to read.

This book is fast, funny, smart and interesting. One of those rare books where you come away both entertained and a bit wiser about all sorts of new things. Keith Snyder has quite an original talent, and I look foward to reading much more of his work.

A private investigator who has a car that's falling apart, gets confused on more than one occasion, is less than successful with the opposite sex, and would rather be composing music? Yes, and it works very well.

Jason Keltner and friends bicker their way through a mystery that features computer technology, numerous laughs, various plot twists, and a fast-paced story. The main character has a vulnerability that makes him appealing and interesting, as when he considers returning to a restaurant and asking the comely seating person for a date:

"Jason didn't feel like leaving town. He flirted briefly with the notion of going back into Denny's and asking the seating person to go somewhere, but there was nowhere to go, she was probably not there anymore, it was getting light out, and--the most compelling reason--there was no way in hell he could ever actually bring himself to do that."

Any male who has ever wimped out on asking an attractive woman for a date will identify with these rationalizations and feel a kinship with Jason. Present company included.

I could have done without the final plot twist, and some readers may be bothered by the absence of any interesting, well-drawn female characters. However, these are minor quibbles. "Coffin" is a compelling, humorous mystery.

Still and again not getting his music composed, Jason rounds up the gang and pursues the solution to a more overtly life-threatening mystery. I suppose one might read this for the mystery but the musketeers' loyalty and love for each other, Jason's occasional observations on the making of art, and the narrator's sense of humor are the rewards.

While I have much more in common with Miss Marple including age and gender, I was drawn into the world of Jason and his musician and computer friends and acqaintances. This time around Jason, Martin and Robert are trying to find a "dongle" which is the McGuffin in this book. Fast paced and hilarious, "Coffins Got the Dead Guy Inside" is a great mystery, with a marvelous plot and likable heroes. This is an A+

Keith Snyder's books were recommended to me by my bookseller, so I was eager to try them out. I picked this one because I thought the title was catchy. Turns out, the title is by far the best thing about this book. What a disappointment!

COFFIN'S GOT THE DEAD GUY is the kind of book a person might write if everything they knew about life came from watching TV. In other words, it has none of the realism or aura of truth that a story needs to make it believable. You can't just rip an old plot off the "Late, Late Show," throw in a couple of computers, and call that a book.

The story is overrun with so many characters, who hardly seem any different from each other, that its tough to keep track of who is who! Their dialog, though, is even worse. The author puts sentences into his chracters mouths that real people never say. It's almost as if he was more interested in showing us he owned a dictionary than in writing real characters.

Snyder's writing is not bad on a sentence by sentence level. It's as good as you'd see in any high school creative writing class. But when its taken alltogether, it falls under its own weight.

A very entertaining read. Well paced plot, interesting characters, wonderful dialog.

I think this is just about the best thing I've ever read. Even the typeface is genius. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. You should buy two, because then not only can you make sure that neither eyeball feels left out while you're reading, but when you're done, you can make a stereopticon with the dustjackets.

Seriously. It's just fantastic. Superlatives cannot express how [do not insert superlative here] this book really is.

Young adults have always been underrepresented as mystery heroes, but Keith Snyder has made a grand start at making up the deficit with wit and style.

Jason Keltner is a sometimes-starving writer and performer of electronic music in urban Southern California, but along the way was recruited by Norman Platt, a friend with mysterious government connections, to perform odd tasks for just enough money to keep his beater of a car together and himself away from McJobs.

This time, he's paid three grand to babysit Paul Reno, who was Jason's friend until he cheated with Jason's now-ex-wife. Taking him into Marengo Manor, the beat-up rental house he shares with several free-floating housemates, immediately plunges Jason and his friends into the case of the murder of a virtual reality guru, the theft of a mysterious black box, and several chases down California's highways by hordes of bad guys driving fleets of Tauruses. Along the way, Jason flees to the desert, hides out in motels, learns to counter the bad guys' moves with random acts and tries to finish "Untitled #23," his latest composition.

In the spirit of the title, the punchline to a riddle posed by one of Jason's friends, Snyder writes a tale equally offbeat and frequently funny. Jason and his friends hold black belts in the art of the deadpan quote.

Keltner's an appealing hero whether giving himself five points for working Ralph Waldo Emerson into an Afrobeat percussive jam or summarizing a Mexican standoff with the bad guys with lines like, "How about we all just stand here and bristle with armament until someone in a condo glances over, sees his worst fears confirmed about those losers who live in the Manor, and calls nine-one-one. Copes race up in two, three hours, and that's that."