On Christmas Eve a crime is committed that’s horrendous even by the violent standards of contemporary Florida: a mum, dad and their three children are shot dead in their home. The police assume the father first killed his family and then killed himself, but Wylie Coyote Melville is unconvinced. Wylie is a therapist who sometimes helps the police with his intuitive take on crimes. Only, this time, investigators don’t want doubt cast on their theory. Wylie can’t help but wonder why, despite his every instinct warning him to steer clear. What follows is a grisly story of police corruption, organised crime and a state with far too many psychopaths in positions of power. Unfortunately, the writer insists on telling us far too much about Wylie – his failed relationships, his weird family, the atrocity his mother saw in Lithuania in the 1940s – even if the disclosures have no bearing on the crime story. The patient reader is, however, rewarded with a solution to the massacre that’s suitably disgusting.
