NAMELESS DAME

Minneapolis private eye Augie Boyer (The Man in the Blizzard, 2008, etc.) spends some time in Sonoma County, with equally shaggy results.

Augie’s friend Bobby Sabbatini has undertaken an even longer journey. A St. Paul homicide cop who retired to the Russian River hamlet of Guerneville, he’s about to open a poetry karaoke bar where like-minded folks can spout Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens and refresh themselves between verses. Augie’s visit to Bobby, his wife Blossom and their baby Milosz doesn’t go exactly as planned. No sooner has he arrived than the town is buzzing over the murder of wild child masseuse Ruthie Rosenberg, a local fixture shot execution-style in the Last Judgment Campground. Deputy Jesse Coolican, who’s long carried a torch for Ruthie, is so hard hit that Augie’s assigned to stay with him instead of Bobby and Blossom—a good thing, since they’re now entertaining a new arrival, Bobby’s “new wife” Quince, who’s helping out the couple and sleeping in what Augie thought of as his bed. (Not that Augie would mind sharing it with her.) Is the murder linked to the shooting years ago of two Christian kids on Fish Head Beach? To Rev. Cecil Hyde’s vociferously anti-poetry ministry at the First Christ River of Blood Church? To a pair of Russian entrepreneurs’ plan to open a casino on the Russian River? And who’s going to solve the case while the most-likely sleuths keep themselves busy smoking up?

The mystery plot commands so little attention that you know it’s a throwaway. The big attractions here are Augie’s voice, the loopy milieu and the recitation of more poems, new and old, than you’ve seen in the genre for a coon’s age.