Death of Blue Mountain Cat

Jack Caleb & John Thinnes #2

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

Native American artist Blue Mountain Cat has a style described as "Andy Warhol meets Jonathan Swift in Indian country." When he's murdered at an exclusive showing in a posh art museum, Detective John Thinnes has no shortage of suspects. Targets of the artist's satire included a greedy developer, a beautiful Navajo woman, and black-market antiquities dealers. And some of the museum's patrons were outraged by his work. Even the victim's wife merits investigation: The death of Blue Mountain Cat sends her into shock but doesn't keep her name off the long list of suspects.

Thinnes drafts psychiatrist Jack Caleb to guide him through the terra incognita of the art world, and the investigation turns up a desperate director, a savage critic, a married mistress, and shady dealings by the artist's partner. Adding to the tension is pressure on the detective to close the high-profile case. Thinnes and Caleb connect several apparently unrelated deaths as they follow leads from Wisconsin to Chicago's South Side and the mystery's explosive conclusion.

Genres: Mystery

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Michael Dymmoch was born in Illinois and grew up in a suburb northwest of Kentucky. As a child she kept a large number of small vertebrates for pets and aspired to become a snake charmer, Indian chief or veterinarian. She was precluded from realizing the former ambitions by a lack of charm and Indian ancestry and from the achieving the latter by poor grades in calculus and physics. This made her angry enough to kill. Fortunately, before committing mayhem, she stumbled upon a book titled Maybe You Should Write a Book and was persuaded to sublimate her felonious fantasies. Moving to Chicago gave Michael additional incentives to harm individuals who piss her off. On paper of course.

Reviews

[Carl Brookins]

Michael Dymmoch is one of the best writers of police fiction alive today. Vastly underrated, her books take you immediately inside the minds and daily activities of interesting motivated cops and aides. The Chicago Ed McBain.

[Lynn P]

so good

A slowly developing friendship and respect between the two main characters continues within a very complex who done it mystery. I am really enjoying these books so far.

[BRT]

The mysteries in this series are good. The characters have depth and their history and motivations are being slowly revealed. This second in the series, however, was jarring at times. Told more from the police side, the constant use of "cauc" describing characters was annoying. Also, while obviously intended to show the nastiness of certain characters and not to be taken as the tone of the novel, the prevalent racism and offensive terms being used were off putting.

[LJ]

Dymmoch, Michael Allen-DEATH OF THE BLUE MOUNTAIN CAT-G-Straight cop, gay psych-2nd in series-charac VG, plot OK

[Helen Fleischer]

vita brevis, arse longa

[Kristijan Sašilo Škof]

Perfect. I'm glad Caleb got himself some action :) Thiness and his stereotypes are still a bit off putting, though, I just hope things will be better in the next installment :)