Customer Reviews

Coyota

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Length:: 0:56 Mins

This is a quick video of my recommendation for Martha Egan's fabulous new novel, Coyota. What a treat this book is!

This novel is set near Albuquerque but falls into international intrigue after the main character, Nena, overhears a conversation between two airport customs agents. Soon after a plane crashes, her house is ransacked and unwittingly Nena realizes she is witness to a murder plot. She travels to Mexico only to become disillusioned with a lover and find herself entangled in bogus drug trafficking charges. The book moves along but the characters are rather flat and the dialog sometimes forced. Things that are supposed to be funny, don't bring a smile. Nevertheless, the story is enough to keep you turning the pages. Written by a long-time Mexican importer, who has a shop in Santa Fe, the setting, the details of the novel are steeped in real-life. Different story layers converge and eventually end satisfactorily. A quick read for a snowy weekend.

Santa Fe author Martha Egan proves that she's in it for the long haul with her second novel, "Coyota." While "Clearing Customs" focused on the owner of a South American folk art shop in Albuquerque (Egan owned Pachamama, a similar shop, in Santa Fe for over 30 years) who is harassed by US Customs agents to cover up their own shady drug deals, "Coyota" concerns an even more nefarious plot: a murder committed by DEA agents and framed as a suicide.

Nena Herrera-Casey of Corrales accidentally overhears a private conversation while she is in the Customs office in Albuquerque; a mysterious fatal accident soon follows and she realizes she is a witness to a murder plot.

Soon she is being followed, her house ransacked and her phone tapped. Nena's hesitation in going to her former boyfriend, a detective, about what she knows puts her in even more danger, and then a Christmas vacation to Mexico with a clueless Anglo boyfriend goes astonishingly bad, and not only because the boyfriend is a jerk.

Egan tells a fast-paced story with plenty of suspense and a well-drawn sense of place; her descriptions of Corralles as well as Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato are a reflection of Egan's own long familiarity with the locales. Her characters are not as crisp as they could be, but that is common in quick reads that are plot-heavy. Nonetheless, "Coyota" is an exciting diversion that sets up a possible series of adventures for an evolving cast of characters.

A friend is dead in a mysterious plane crash - but could there be more to it? "Coyota" follows Nena Herrera-Casey as she copes with the death of one of her former students. This was bad enough, until she heard a conversation which made the term "accident" describing the student's death a questionable one at best. She is falsely set up on drug charges, and must face her fears as she flees through the desert. A gripping thriller all the way through, "Coyota" is highly recommended to fans of the genre, and for community library collections.