The Girl in the Coyote Coat

The Girl in the Coyote Coat is an epic character-driven novel, layered, witty, challenging. Its young Adelaide Humphrys develops a dangerous nomadic temperament: She wants what she wants, even if she has to steal a little to get him or to get her own coyote coat. It is only for a time. Looking back at what happens after? History is not her thing.

Yes, she affects others, but Adelaide is confident any damage will not outlive her very temporary stay. Adelaide is not one to play for keeps. Until she does. And the damage will be permanent.

When the two bodies are found in the house, one of them not even the most jaded investigators will forget. The body lies, mostly, on the bed. Cold. Wrapped in a lush coyote coat.

The "how" is pretty obvious. The "why"? That requires some telling. So does the "who"? There are only two coyote coat candidates: Adelaide and Elizabeth, further linked, fatefully, by one man, Philip.

Elizabeth is the young heiress of a banking fiefdom, a social insider of the first rank. She is intelligent, gentle, open and quite simply beautiful. And married. She is beloved even by those who envy her, not to mention all the men around her. That includes her business partner and still-devoted ex-flame Philip.

At eighteen, Adelaide is over a decade younger than Elizabeth, years savvier in certain ways and more closed than Elizabeth is open. No one will ever describe Adelaide as beautiful, but she has an improbable presence that captivates and impossibly narrow eyes that offer no hint of what resides inside.

Do Adelaide's eyes hide a conscience? Or was it packed away during one of the many moves by her corporate climbing father? Like any permanent outsider, Adelaide has discovered that hooks, not scruples, are what count. Hooks that get her inside. Drugs and sex, just for starters.

A few years earlier, Adelaide briefly encountered Philip, but the moment seemed destined to be only a flirtatious memory.

Forget memories. Adelaide is back. She is enough older now to be way beyond flirting.

Adelaide shares something more with Elizabeth than wanting Philip. Each owns a sensual coyote fur coat, partly to keep out cold, partly to wrap heat inside. For each, sex on the two coyote coats transforms the furs into symbols of their passions.

Betrayed, a symbol, like a need, can turn wicked.

And so, one coyote will turn deadly.

But for "whom"?