{"id":2056,"date":"2016-09-26T18:02:50","date_gmt":"2016-09-27T01:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=2056"},"modified":"2016-09-26T18:02:50","modified_gmt":"2016-09-27T01:02:50","slug":"john-keyse-walker-sun-sand-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/john-keyse-walker-sun-sand-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"John Keyse-Walker: Sun, Sand, Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sunsand\"Mr. Keyse-Walker is the winner of the Mystery Writers of America\/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel award (the award being publication), so I turned to it with some interest. Past winners of Minotaur\/St. Martin\u2019s contests include Steve Hamilton, Michael Koryta and Julia Spencer-Fleming, so the bar is somewhat high. I was at first jarred as I opened a novel set on tiny Anegada, a remote member of the British Virgin Islands. The main character is special constable Teddy Creque, who is a native islander. The author, a lawyer from Ohio, couldn\u2019t seem more removed from his character, but then I decided the guy who wrote Memoirs of a Geisha<\/em> wasn\u2019t very much like his character either, so I settled in.<\/p>\n

Keyse-Walker is a natural storyteller. While some of the tropes are familiar\u2014the small town cop (the \u201ctown\u201d just happens to be one of the Virgin Islands, so his beat includes the beach), the sidekick, the mistress and the chaotic and expected family life\u2014Keyse-Walker adds his own sparkle to the proceedings, making reading this novel very enjoyable.<\/p>\n

I especially loved the sidekick, De White Rasta, a white English man who spends his days happily stoned, sleeping on the beach, and bothering nobody. When De White Rasta alerts the police that he\u2019s found a body, Teddy isn\u2019t sure whether to believe him, and takes him along on a bumpy jeep ride, only to indeed discover a dead body covered with scavenging tiny crabs. The body, that of a professor studying the island\u2019s iguanas, raises more questions than it answers. Who would want to kill a man studying iguanas who lived in the back of a bar, all his belongings stored in plastic crates?<\/p>\n

Teddy gets into a bit of trouble as he moves the body (and throws up next to it) thus destroying the crime scene; he\u2019s put on suspension, to take place later, and ordered not<\/em> to investigate. This is a mystery novel, however, so of course Teddy investigates, with the help of De White Rasta, perhaps one of my favorite sidekicks in recent memory.<\/p>\n

In fact, while this novel was expected in many ways, it was unexpected in many others, including the excellent denouement and surprising solution to the crime. The setting was the icing on the cake, and if you\u2019ve ever visited the Virgin Islands, you\u2019ll realize it\u2019s pretty authentic. I found myself smiling along with Teddy as he attempted to crack his first case. I hope there will be more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr. Keyse-Walker is the winner of the Mystery Writers of America\/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel award (the award being publication), so I turned to it with some interest. Past winners of Minotaur\/St. Martin\u2019s contests include Steve Hamilton, Michael Koryta and Julia Spencer-Fleming, so the bar is somewhat high. I was at first jarred as I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-2056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2058,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions\/2058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}