Coyote Fork

by James Wilson

British journalist Robert Lovelace travels to California to report on the social media giant Global Village. He’s horrified by what he finds: a company—guided by the ruthless vision of its founder, Evan Bone—that seems to be making journalism itself redundant. Appalled, he decides to abandon the project and return home.



But as he leaves he has a disconcerting encounter that sends him off in a totally different direction. Soon he finds himself embarked on an increasingly fraught and dangerous mission. The aim: to uncover the murky truth about Evan Bone’s past and his pathological disregard for the human cost of the behemoth he has created.



Robert’s quest takes him from San Francisco to a small college town in the Midwest, to the site of a former hippie commune in northern California, introducing us to a range of vivid characters, and confronting us with the price we pay—online trolling; the loss of privacy; professional ruin—for living in an “interconnected” world. Finally, he makes a startling discovery—and is thrown into a completely unforeseen existential dilemma.



A timely, stylishly written, and brilliantly conceived metaphysical thriller, Coyote Fork carries us on an unforgettable journey, before bringing us face to face with the darkness at the heart of Silicon Valley itself.

Genres: Fiction

266 pages, ebook

Published September 1, 2020

About the author

JAMES WILSON was born and brought up near Cambridge, and studied History at Oxford University. He now divides his time between London and France.

In 1975 James received a Ford Foundation grant to research and write The Original Americans: US Indians, for the Minority Rights in London. Over the next twenty-five years he travelled widely in the US and Canada, working on – among other projects – a number of radio and TV documentaries, including the award-winning Savagery and the American Indian and The Two Worlds of the Innu, both for the BBC. His critically-acclaimed history of Native Americans, The Earth Shall Weep, was published by Picador in the UK in 1998, and by Grove/Atlantic in the US the following year. In 2000, it won a Myers Outstanding Book award. James continues to serve as a member of the executive committee of Survival, an international organization campaigning for the rights of indigenous peoples worldwide.

James is the author of four novels, all published by Faber & Faber: The Dark Clue (described by Allan Massie in The Scotsman as ‘wonderfully entertaining’, and by The Washington Post as ‘a stunning first novel’); The Bastard Boy (longlisted for the IMPAC Award); The Woman in the Picture (‘multi-layered, deeply absorbing and entertaining’ – The Times; ‘A superb achievement’ – Kevin Brownlow); and Consolation (‘an animated, haunting and surprisingly uplifting novel’ – The Observer).

A fifth novel, The Summer of Broken Stories, will be published by Alma Books in April 2015.

You can visit James online at jameswilsonauthor.com, and on Twitter at @jcwilsonauthor.

Reviews

[Lel Budge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coyote Fork Is the tale of Robert Lovelace and his journey to find the truth behind social media giant, Evan Bone.

This is a thriller so in tune with the present day it feels like it could be happening right now. There is the ever present need for instant news to the extent traditional journalism is disappearing.

How lives are spent permanently connected to the online world, some in search of fame and validation from invisible voices, who can and do turn suddenly vicious and ruin reputations and lives in keystroke.

It’s also about culture, insidious technology and a murder.

Beautifully written and utterly compelling from start to finish. A unique and timely thriller.

Thank you to Random Things Tours for the opportunity to be part of this blog tour, for the promotional material and an eARC of Coyote Fork.

[Rajiv · Rating 4 out of 5]

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Coyote Fork is a unique and very creative dystopian thriller that takes you on a futuristic adventure.

Reading Coyote Fork was unnerving. Even though it takes place in a futuristic world, it has many similarities to our present world. Firstly, I loved the world-building. The author takes social media to a whole new level with TOLSTOY. He creates a profiling software that would easily monitor its personality. As scary as it sounds at times, I found the story’s concepts fascinating. Also, I wonder if that is where technology’s future leads. Even the Global Village sounds like a fantastic setting.

Similarly, the characters are also well-drawn. I liked Rob as the lead and his journey to get revenge on Evan Bone. Some scenes that stood out for me was when Ruth and Rob investigate Beth or their research about the commune. Moreover, the author increases the thriller element as the story progresses. Another exciting feature is the villain. The author creates a grey area where you don’t know who to blame for the crimes. You decide whether the responsibility is solely the person or the concept they created.

However, my only criticism of the story is the way it ended. The story ends in an abrupt manner where quite a few questions remain unanswered. It would have been nice to get some closure on individual characters.

Apart from that, this was quite entertaining. Overall, I would recommend this book if you want to read a futuristic thriller that showcases how social media control us.

[landrejczyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

3. lots of confusion but some decent points and good plot line. thank you mr. cuddy!

[P J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly readable, fast paced and beautifully written, this is a literary novel in a thriller form.
The plot is very topical as it reveals the dangers of everyday internet media--those aspects to which we have become blind, and those which we never suspected. Our arch, mild-mannered narrator takes us across an intriguing Californian landscape (Silicon Valley, old hippie commune, Native indigenous community) in search of a dark secret that ultimately asks: just what does it mean to be human?

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Coyote Fork” is a contemporary thriller that’ll certainly make you think about your social media usage. I was kept engaged throughout and I enjoyed the many twists and turns along the way. A strong 4 stars from me!

My full review: https://whatrebeccasread.wordpress.co...

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting insights into the power of social media to ruin lives.

[Paterson Loarn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In mild-mannered, middle-aged, overdressed Robert Lovelace, Wilson has created an intriguing new anti-hero. Acting on a tip-off from an unreliable but compelling source, he embarks on a road-trip across America in search of justice, with only a vague idea of what crime has been committed. Meanwhile, he throws a fresh light on aspects of modern life to which we have grown so accustomed, we no longer bother to ask whether they are good for us. Loss of privacy, the effect of social media abuse on our mental health and the overwhelming power of giant corporations, all feature in Coyote Fork.

British journalist Robert Lovelace travels to California to report on social media giant Global Village. He’s horrified by what he finds: a company—guided by the ruthless vision of its founder, Evan Bone—that will destroy traditional journalism. Appalled, he decides to abandon the project and return home, but as he leaves, he has a disconcerting encounter. Soon he finds himself embarking on an increasingly fraught and dangerous mission to uncover the murky truth, about Evan Bone’s past and his disregard for the human cost of the behemoth he has created.

Lovelace’s quest takes him from San Francisco to a small college town in the Midwest. From there he travels, in the company of a new lover, to the site of a former hippie commune in northern California. Along the way, he introduces the reader to a number of colourful and engaging characters. Meanwhile, with each phone call, hotel booking and credit card purchase, he renders himself ever more vulnerable to manipulation by Evan Bone, the sinister creator of Global Village. In his efforts to defend his chosen profession of journalism, he shows he is lion-hearted, but, in the face of technological surveillance, he becomes a lamb to the slaughter.

The destructive side of social media is shown through the persecution of Lovelace’s sidekick, Professor Halassian, who is cruelly trolled by students because of her curriculum choices. While delving deeper into the activities of Global Village, he identifies other, even more tragic victims of hate crime, and questions whether the benefits of social media are worth its negative consequences. Unwilling to accept Evan Bone’s devastating effect on traditional journalism, he follows his chosen trail, until he finds himself trapped in a dilemma he both longed for and feared. To employ a metaphor linked to Native American culture, Lovelace attempts to fight weapons of mass destruction with a bow and arrows.

Eventually, through perseverance, our hero exposes a terrible crime in the real world. However, Wilson’s latest novel contains magical moments. Some aspects of the plot hover on the edge of rationality. There is a sense that Evan Bone is an evil magician, and Global Village the enchanted land where he keeps his victims under a spell. This may sound fanciful, but a convincing representation of Native American mythology underlines the theory. Coyote Fork also has some of the characteristics of a historical novel. While suspense builds up and Lovelace makes progress with the investigation, his discoveries evoke the distant past and link it to recent history.

There is also a strong vein of humour in Coyote Fork. Wilson has a satirical turn of phrase, often used in relation to food. A cup of iced tea looks like a urine sample, a Caesar salad is the size of a football, a bag of crisps is ‘world-weary’. He also has a fine eye for a motif, with fake or dried flowers appearing in strategic points across small-town America, perhaps to represent a diminishing sense of reality among the population, because of manipulation by Evan Bone and others of his ilk.

I recommend Coyote Fork to fans of crime novels, indigenous culture and alternative lifestyles.

[Hannah Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a little while to get into this book but before I knew it I was halfway through and the book seemed to be just moving at its own pace. The storyline carries you along with it and you find yourself getting drawn in and wanting to uncover the truth alongside Robert. There were numerous occasions where you got the feeling that he was in grave danger and didn't know if something was going to happen when you turned the page. I think it was this fear and unease that made me want to keep on reading.

This was my first metaphysical thriller (fiction that transcends the here and now, based on some form of philosophy or stem of thought) but to me I probably likened it more to a dystopian thriller. It had the feeling of a true and real story that could actually happen but also looked into the idea of social media taking control. Could social media get to the point where it controlled and even predicted our thoughts and experiences, in this instance it's looking at the creation of stories and how the Global Village could look at what we really want and make up our own 'stories'.

For me, this message was slightly subdued and the focus was more on the journey that Robert was on, you could say it was a bit of a wild goose hunt or a treasure trail, with different clues popping up along the way but I quite liked this pattern of events and how they unfolded. I really wanted to uncover the truth and now that I know the ending I probably could have seen it coming but I didn't ever manage to guess correctly and this was because of the way the author points you to the ending that they want you to make.

The only thing I didn't really like about this was that I felt there were a lot of unanswered questions at the end and I found the last page rather disappointing because of this. It felt like there was a lot more to uncover and we'd only really scratched the surface.

[Ned Bachus · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Wilson’s Coyote Fork sweeps the reader along with protagonist Robert Lovelace, a British journalist, on a journey that will hook and hold lovers of noir mysteries all the way to the book’s conclusion. While that ought to be enough to warrant a recommendation, this novel’s appeal transcends genre expectations, exploring cosmic questions in a timely way.

A scan of reviews and the publisher’s jacket blurb reveals an intriguing list of categorizations: techno-noir, metaphysical thriller, nature vs. nurture tale.

Some reviewers/readers mislabel the novel “dystopian.” Yes, Coyote Fork’s fictional terrain certainly is dehumanizing and frightening, but novelist Wilson did not have to imagine a future with such depraved institutions and characters. Present day Silicon Valley and its myriad tentacles does just fine.

Wilson’s stew of cultural influences is complex, and his understanding of causation and interrelationship impressive. In an interview with Shelley Fallows (who called Coyote Fork a “timely, stylishly written, and brilliantly conceived metaphysical thriller”), author Wilson describes Silicon Valley as “the improbable lovechild of two radically contradictory visions…the heroic individualism of Ayn Rand” and “the hippie movement of the sixties and seventies.”

Add to this the backdrop of a native American community (one of Wilson’s areas of expertise; he authored The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, which won a Myers Outstanding Book Award), and you’ve got the ingredients for an entertaining and rich novel about troubling and important issues.

In Wilson’s capable hands, the result is a story that works and characters that earn the reader’s interest. I am not a regular reader of thrillers, but this is one I plan to reread and to share with friends.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coyote Fork is the kind of thriller that takes you to unexpected places, and as such, it makes it very difficult to review without giving away too much... but here goes!

When journalist Robert Lovelace travels to California he intends to write a piece on the mysterious head of the media giant Global Village, Evan Bone, who has cost him his job, but what he encounters there sends him in quite a different direction.

What starts out as a journalistic investigation into possible corporate cover-ups, turns into an altogether different metaphysical beast, by way of gum shoe noir, road trip adventure, conspiracy chronicle, and menacing small town Wicker Man-esque yarn, with supernatural undertones. It's twisty, unpredictable and completely addictive.

This genre busting novel builds into a story that has fascinating characters leading us into mind boggling and far-reaching themes. There is a lot to get your teeth into - the role of social media and the responsibility of the corporations that own them; on-line communities, internet trolling and the toll they take on mental health; environmental issues; and the rights of indigenous peoples - not to mention the human elements of the story, which are ripe with love, loss, jealousy, betrayal and revenge.

And the whole entertaining, weirdly circular shebang will leave you pondering some of the biggest existential questions about the fate of human kind too!

I like to think of it as David Cronenberg does Michael Crichton... and if that doesn't make you want to read it, then I don't know what will!

[Jane Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review of Coyote Fork by James Wilson comes as part of a Blog Tour. I received a free copy of the paperback.

Let’s be clear – Mr Wilson can turn a phrase.

“Two sad-looking oranges sat in a bowl, waiting to be declared unfit for human consumption.”

“Drew’s address was in a square, monumental apartment block, set at an angle to its neighbors, as if it were spurning their company.”

“Her smile was cold and slithery, like a half-melted lump of ice in a glass.”

I very much appreciate a good writer, and Mr Wilson is that.

This is, essentially, a nature vs nurture tale; how one’s upbringing can affect one’s life. It includes concepts and snippets of intrusive technology, Native American peoples and lifestyles, climate change, and humanity’s general indifference. Oh, and a dash of the paranormal.

There’s a villain in the piece, but it’s divided between a single man and the system he created, and overreaching and (seemingly) intrusive social medial platform/community network called Global Village. Global Village brings comparisons to another well known social medial platform, but takes it further – into a darker and more insidious realm.

I was nervous about this one. Not sure why… Perhaps I thought I’d be sucked into another ‘social media is evil’ debate. This book is more than that.

Twisting and turning, it sucked me in. I was 150 pages deep before I knew it – thoroughly enjoying myself!

Worth a read for the brilliant language alone, though I do have to say that the ending left me cold. I’ll let you judge for yourself.

[Nick Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This well-written thriller moves like a bobsleigh-run - it just gets faster and faster as the tension steadily builds. It's got the feel and the shape of a classic Hitchcock - think North-by-Northwest - where, with every discovery that our hero makes, his jeopardy increases. There's nothing dated or retro about the themes of the story though - it's a spiralling and terrifying descent into the world of big tech and social media. It paints a deft portrait of small towns in northern California but, as the road-movie gathers pace, you know that it's the unseen world beneath the everyday that is tightening its digital noose round our hero's neck. It's a thriller and the narrator is a white male - but the strongest characters are women and the landscape most sympathetically described is a forgotten Native American settlement whose timelessness defies the rootless futurism of the geeky tech wizards. If you want a really compelling read that speaks volumes about the world today, then I recommend this beautifully written book.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review:
Coyote Fork is a thriller. It is very current for the things happening today, and I found it easy to become absorbed into the plot.
Our lives are so reliant on the online world. This novel explores that idea and how quickly it can escalate in ways people are not prepared for.
The thriller/mystery plot line had me hooked. I enjoyed the twists and turns. The writing was excellent. I was kept on my toes from start to finish.
Rating:
4/5☆
*I received a free copy of this book from Random Things Tours in exchange for an honest review on the blog tour. All opinions are my own and unbiased .*

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really well-written and timely thriller that had me on the edge of my seat. I didn't think it lagged anywhere.

This quote really resonated: "It’s the spirit of the age. The yearning for purity." This applies to the vicious online policing and cancel culture happening in the book, so very much like what's happening today, as well as the driving impetus behind the founding of the Coyote Fork commune way back when.

Can Robert uncover the secret of what really happened there all those years ago, and how it's related to modern-day social media/tech tycoon Evan Bone? It's a great journey finding out! I would've liked to have seen more wrap-up at the end, but otherwise a great and thought-provoking book.

[Len · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a timely and well-written book!
There's more gratuitous language than I'd want or expect from this publisher, but it's a great story about our sick, social-media-soaked times.

[JimtheDean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story. Kept me reading. In some ways a bit scary in light of our modern use of technology.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

An thriller that doesn't stop at adventure, but dives into the soul destroying behaviour of big tech. Highly recommended.