Snake Eyes [Paperback]

Richard Hoyt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1996

John Denson, the Seattle private eye with a taste for cheap wine, and his partner, Willie Prettybird, a shaman of the Cowlitz tribe, come up against their deadliest case--an engineered outbreak of anthrax in the Pacific Northwest that may kill hundreds of people, unless they can locate the villian who's spreading the disease.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Seattle PI John Denson (who never met a piece of bacon he didn't like) and his partner, Cowlitz Indian William Prettybird (who never met a mushroom he didn't like) find themselves in Enterprise, Ore., combatting an outbreak of anthrax, better known as hoof-and-mouth disease. They have been hired by the lawyer of Monty Hook, an outspoken anti-environmentalist rancher whose cattle have inexplicably become infected. Meanwhile, the odious Reverend Thaddeus Hamm Bonnerton, a right-wing preacher who spices his rants with environmentalist frenzy (e.g., proclaiming the hole in the ozone punishment for the sins of livestock farmers), is back in town for a revival meeting and for his high-school reunion. Cows die, people are murdered and Denson and Prettybird have to sort it all out?Denson employing the chat-and-chew method while Prettybird relies on hallucinogenic encounters with his beloved animal people. It's hard not to like the two detectives, and Hoyt (Red Card) is observant and funny writing from Denton's point of view. But, with a dearth of truly viable suspects, Hoyt needs either more satire or more suspense to carry his weak plot.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Trouble is piling up for cattle rancher Monty Hook. An outbreak of infectious anthrax forces him to slaughter hundreds of steers. His ranch is crawling with state police investigating the death of one of their own on Hook's land. Worse, the cattle appear to have been purposely infected, and the disease threatens to spread lethally to people in eastern Oregon's high country. Enter private eyes John Denson and Willie Prettybird, a shaman of the Cowlitz tribe. While Willie investigates by interviewing the animal people and looking at the mystery in the context of the Great Hoop (life), Denson deals with the people, including a bodacious bartender and a bogus televangelist, attends rodeos and high-school reunions, and romances a beautiful young Native American widow. Denson mysteries always feature environmental issues, Native American wisdom, and relentless ethnic chivying between the mismatched private detectives. This latest is no exception, and libraries will want to meet the expectations of their Denson fans. Thomas Gaughan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Forge (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812550722
• ISBN-13: 978-0812550726
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,202,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Richard Hoyt has a B.S. and M.S. in journalism from the University of Oregon and a PhD in American studies from the University of Hawaii. He was a fellow in national and international editing and reporting at the Washington Journalism Center. He served as a counterintelligence agent for the U.S. Army before becoming a reporter for both the morning and afternoon daily newspapers in Honolulu; he was also the Honolulu correspondent for Newsweek magazine. He later taught journalism and writing courses at the University of Maryland and at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.
Richard is private by nature but loves to travel. He has lived and worked for periods in Negril, Jamaica; Bray, Ireland; Torquay, southern England; Amsterdam; Seville; Lagos, Portugal; Sao Paulo; San Ignacio, Belize; Tangier; Hong Kong; and on the islands of Negros, Mindanao, and Cebu in the Philippines. He rode trains across the Soviet Union and riverboats from the headwaters of the Amazon to the Atlantic.
This photograph of Richard was taken by Tessie Artes Hoyt

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable reading a la Elmore Leonard, December 8, 2000

By 

Dr. Christopher Coleman (HONG KONG) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Snake Eyes (Paperback)

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.