Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novels are books I enjoy and make a point of reading and reviewing. He also collaborates on novels with his son Jesse. I reviewed one of Jesse’s solo books here before, but didn’t recommend it highly. I thought it was well-written, but morally kind of empty. However, I figured I’d see how he works with his father, so I bought Coyote Hills, book 6 of his Clay Edison series.

Clay Edison used to be an investigator for the Alameda County, California Coroner’s Office. He left that job for reasons which are doubtless explained in earlier installments. Now he’s a private eye, specializing – by preference – in boring desk work.

But there’s another PI named Regina Klein, who prefers more colorful and dangerous work, and she asks Clay to collaborate on a new case. There’s a very wealthy couple whose adult son was found drowned on a beach. The police judged the death accidental, but they are sure he was murdered. Clay uses his police contacts to learn all he can, then goes on to fresh lines of inquiry, including an expensive computer-generated map of coastal currents. But the final truth he uncovers will reveal darker currents yet – the murky ones within the human heart.

I thought (echoing my response to my previous reading of Jesse Kellerman) that Coyote Hills was well-written. The characters were rounded, the dialogue good. Sometimes it was funny.

But I can’t recommend the book to our audience at Brandywine Books. It comes out of another moral world. It’s not only a matter of the casual acceptance of homosexuality, which is pretty much a given nowadays. This book goes deeply into the realm of sexual kink. It made me uncomfortable. You may, of course, respond differently, if you’re more broad-minded than I am.

Also, the authors make it clear that Regina Klein is a very attractive woman, yet Clay’s wife shows no sign of jealousy or concern about their collaboration. I’m the most ignorant man in the world when it comes to marriage issues, but I found this kind of implausible. It read to me like a story from some alternate universe where men and women have slightly different natures.

I have praise but no recommendation for Coyote Hills.