Essential Saltes [Hardcover]

Don Webb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1999

There is a murder. There is a theft. Otherwise, Essential Saltes bears little in common with most crime novels.

The murder victim is Haidee, Matthew Reynman's beloved wife. She was shot by a madman two years ago. Matthew keeps her ashes on the mantel; he intends to put the ashes into a fireworks rocket in her honor.

The theft occurs at Matthew's party. Why would anyone steal Haidee's ashes? Matthew is not a detective; he runs a used bookstore in Austin, Texas, and operates fireworks on holidays. But he won't rest until he solves this puzzler and recovers those ashes. His search will take him far beyond the realm of any cops-and-robbers adventure, into deeper mysteries.

Essential Saltes is a fascinating novel lit up by Don Webb's pyrotechnic imagination.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Webb, a Texas writer and fireworks operator, has done it again: his second novel is just as tricky, just as literate, just as funny, just as intellectually challenging as his first, The Double. The brother of the star of The Double, Matthew Reynman, an Austin bookseller who operates fireworks on holidays, discovers that someone has stolen the ashes of his murdered wife. The only suspects seem to be Matthew's closest friends. Webb is a master at constructing elaborate plots that are full of remarkable surpises, and he delivers another one here. Readers who love a challenge, who love to listen to characters talking about books and ideas--as opposed to trading bullets and running around in circles--will find themselves dreading the end of this novel and eagerly awaiting Webb's next offering. There are few writers who can match Webb's way of looking at the world, and this fine novel deserves to be at the top of every mystery fan's must-have list. Readers familiar with British writer Stephen Fry's literate, witty, perplexing novels and stories may hear faint echoes in Webb's writing, but in the mystery genre, Webb may be unique. David Pitt

From Kirkus Reviews

The very first sentence says it all: Many years later, as he was to discover that someone had stolen his wife's cremains, Matthew Reynman was to remember the night he discovered the link between fireworks, masturbation, and black women. Now, sure enough, it's many years after Matthew's masturbatory non-encounter with his Aunt Martha's maid Sophie on July Fourth, 1980, and two years since his beloved African-American wife Haidee Bomars was gunned down by William Delaplace, the jilted lover she and Matthew had befriended. And right on schedule, Haidee's ashes have been stolen from the candy dish where Matthew kept them, presumably by one of the friends he'd invited to a party at which he didn't keep a close enough eye on the cremains. Worse, William Delaplace has been released from prison due to a clerical error and is headed like a homing pigeon back to Matthew's hearth, where he'll trash the place and leave threatening messages. What to do? For an intrepid hero of Matthew's storied background (Doublesign, Texas; the New Atlantis Bookstore); strength (the courage to defy his family and hers when he married Haidee); and formative memory of that formative experience with Sophie, there's only one choice: he agrees to let Delaplace kill him on May 18th, after Delaplace returns from a trip it's too late to cancel. It's just about then that Webb leaves Richard Brautigan territory and heads into the serious weirdness of H.P. Lovecraft. Like its predecessor, The Double (1998): puckish fun for pop postmodernists, restlessness alert for the less hip. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312203020
• ISBN-13: 978-0312203023
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,816,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Offbeat fun!, September 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Essential Saltes (Hardcover)

Looking for a smart, different kind of mystery tale? Try this brew of murder, sex, the occult, and bookish learning. It's Don Webb's followup to his first novel, THE DOUBLE; this one features Matthew Reynman, brother of John Reynman, THE DOUBLE's hero. But you don't need to have read THE DOUBLE. Just a sample of what you'll find here: chapters titled "Tzuris of Orfamay" and "Zeugma," a reference to "Falconer's CRYPTOMENYSIS," and the secret to constructing plots by means of ... well, you'll see. This pungent cross-section of Austin, Texas is several cuts above your run-of-the-mill mystery.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very strange, always ingriguing, fantastical mystery, October 23, 2000

By 

Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essential Saltes (Hardcover)

Many books are hard to categorize, and many books are categorized for marketing reasons rather than any formal genre definition. (Which is fine with me, genre definitions being so hard to come by.) _Essential Saltes_ seems to be marketed as a mystery, and indeed it is one. It's also arguably SF/Fantasy, though it's open to multiple readings. But it's definitely good, and filled with outré content that ought to satisfy our desire for the strange.

Don Webb has published boatloads of short stories. As a writer, he is weird, often funny, often strange, always interesting, and Texan. As a book, _Essential Saltes_ is all of those things. The protagonist is Matthew Reynman, a used-book dealer in Austin. His wife was murdered 2 years prior to the action, and now her ashes have been stolen. Matthew had promised to keep them and arrange for his and her ashes to be mixed and shot off in fireworks after his death. This really annoys him, and, much worse, his wife's murderer has been released from prison in a bureaucratic snafu. Matthew tries to find the thief of his wife's remains, and at the same time avoid being killed by his wife's murderer. The story involves many very odd characters, and a mix of subjects that in its eclecticness reminds me of Robertson Davies (though it's not a very Davies-like book): fireworks, sex, race, alchemy, used books, codes and code-breaking, mental illness, polyamory, and more. There are also some tantalizing hints of a story involving Matthew's brother John, which is the subject of Webb's first novel, _The Double_, also recommended.

_Essential Saltes_ is continually interesting just for the strange characters, the odd subject matter, and the well-described sex. The plot is full of action, but at times a bit discursive, and almost too strange for me. That is, the motivations of the very strange individuals involved were perhaps a bit too odd to always hold my interest. But the rest of the book was strong enough to keep me going, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Definitely worth reading.

5.0 out of 5 stars Weird but good, January 4, 2001

By 

Shaun Mcclintock "MBA student" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essential Saltes (Hardcover)

The book isn't a quick read but in a rambling style that reminds me of Willam Gibson. I only could read a few chapters a day and then I'd have to stop to digest. This is a great book, full of humor, alot of wisdom, earnestness, and insight, and a bit of fantasy and sex. A bit of mystery too. It gives you a good feel for the city of Austin, TX and the weird folk there that are the norm for that city.