Name: SKYLAR
ISBN: 9780006498797

Gregory Mcdonald

SKYLAR

Jeff James

At times the "southern"-ness of this book gets laid on a little thick, but I suppose that's meant to be part of the joke, and it didn't bother me much.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, and look forward to reading more work by McDonald. His style is plain, direct, almost Hemingway-lite with its utilitarian descriptive passages, combined with largely noirish/deadpan dialog. The noir style still seeps through in this book even though it's crossed with, as one reviewer put it, an overly "cornpone" dialect.

One of the nicest things about this book is that the mystery was a real mystery, at least to me. Skylar, the main character, was actively involved in solving it without it seeming out of character for an intelligent farm boy to make connections and find clues.

I also liked that the "villain" of the story, Sheriff Culpepper, was extremely sympathetic, even though you could definitely tell he wasn't quite competent as a sheriff. You genuinely cared about his marriage and life troubles, and I liked that McDonald tied what seemed like completely disparate threads together at the end of the book.

The final confrontation between the Sheriff and Skyler did come off a bit clichéd, however, and I was disappointed that such a likable character morphed into a more cookie-cutter villain during the climax.

I wish I could have found a picture of the hardback cover from the copy I read instead of the picture I used up there. The hardback cover uses a much cooler image, of a long-legged blonde lying on her back and making the letter "Y" of Skylar's name with her legs. The paperback makes it look like some kind of Confederate sex novel.

I don't know whether or not I'll read the sequel novel (if I can even find it). According to reviews on Amazon, he lays on the "southern" aspect a little too thick in "Skylar in Yankeeland".

SKYLAR

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