What do you think?
Rate this book
Hickey Family Mystery #6
The Do-Re-Mi
It's late summer, 1972, up in California's redwood forests. They seem a ""safe and wondrous place,"" but some of Evergreen's population is growing pot up in the trees and others are bent on stealing it. Then there's the coming folk festival, a jamboree bringing in musicians, fans, war protestors--a ferment of flower power (the local hippies), raw power (the local biker gangs, notably the Cossacks), and the power of the law (local and federal). Skirting the edges are shades of the Manson Family and the Mexican Mafia.
Clifford Hickey, scheduled to perform a guitar gig at the festival before trucking off to law school, arrives at his brother Alvaro's peaceful woodland campsite. And within moments Alvaro, combat trained, is faced with six armed men in badges crashing the camp, and runs. Clifford, surprised, is arrested and brutally cuffed, so brutally he fears for his hands. He then learns that a young man, one of the sheriffs' nephews, has just been murdered. Alvaro is the posse's quarry.
So here's Clifford, on the brink of adult life, pitched into not just a murder but what develops into a duel between the Hickeys--for his father and mother soon drive up--and the law, between the Hickeys and the Cossacks--who seemingly have their own agenda for Alvaro and, between the Hickeys and the locals, and finally between the Hickeys and their own past.
Ken Kuhlken won St. Martin's Best First Private Eye Novel contest for the first Hickey family case, The Loud Adios.
Clifford Hickey, scheduled to perform a guitar gig at the festival before trucking off to law school, arrives at his brother Alvaro's peaceful woodland campsite. And within moments Alvaro, combat trained, is faced with six armed men in badges crashing the camp, and runs. Clifford, surprised, is arrested and brutally cuffed, so brutally he fears for his hands. He then learns that a young man, one of the sheriffs' nephews, has just been murdered. Alvaro is the posse's quarry.
So here's Clifford, on the brink of adult life, pitched into not just a murder but what develops into a duel between the Hickeys--for his father and mother soon drive up--and the law, between the Hickeys and the Cossacks--who seemingly have their own agenda for Alvaro and, between the Hickeys and the locals, and finally between the Hickeys and their own past.
Ken Kuhlken won St. Martin's Best First Private Eye Novel contest for the first Hickey family case, The Loud Adios.
228 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2006
16 people want to read
About the author
Ken Kuhlken
29 books43 followersKen Kuhlken's stories have appeared in ESQUIRE and numerous other magazines, been honorably mentioned in BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
His novels include MIDHEAVEN, finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first fiction book, and the Hickey family mysteries: THE BIGGEST LIAR IN LOS ANGELES; THE GOOD KNOW NOTHING; THE VENUS DEAL; THE LOUD ADIOS, Private Eye Writers of America Press Best First PI Novel; THE ANGEL GANG; THE DO-RE-MI, finalist for the Shamus Best Novel Award; THE VAGABOND VIRGINS; THE VERY LEAST; and THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.
Hisfive-book saga FOR AMERICA, is together a long, long novel and an incantation, a work of magic created to postpone the end of the world for at least a thousand years.
His work in progress is a YA mystery.
His WRITING AND THE SPIRIT advises artists seeking inspiration. He guides readers on a trip to the Kingdom of Heaven in READING BROTHER LAWRENCE.
Also, he reads a lot, plays golf, watches and coaches baseball and softball, teaches at Perelandra College, and hangs out with his daughter when she comes home from her excellent college back east.
His novels include MIDHEAVEN, finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first fiction book, and the Hickey family mysteries: THE BIGGEST LIAR IN LOS ANGELES; THE GOOD KNOW NOTHING; THE VENUS DEAL; THE LOUD ADIOS, Private Eye Writers of America Press Best First PI Novel; THE ANGEL GANG; THE DO-RE-MI, finalist for the Shamus Best Novel Award; THE VAGABOND VIRGINS; THE VERY LEAST; and THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.
Hisfive-book saga FOR AMERICA, is together a long, long novel and an incantation, a work of magic created to postpone the end of the world for at least a thousand years.
His work in progress is a YA mystery.
His WRITING AND THE SPIRIT advises artists seeking inspiration. He guides readers on a trip to the Kingdom of Heaven in READING BROTHER LAWRENCE.
Also, he reads a lot, plays golf, watches and coaches baseball and softball, teaches at Perelandra College, and hangs out with his daughter when she comes home from her excellent college back east.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 8, 2013
THE DO-RE-MI offers something rather fresh and different to the hard-boiled detective genre. The story is that of Clifford Hickey, son of well-known detective Tom Hickey, being thrown into a murder investigation all his own. The setting (a Woodstock-esque music festival) is original, the supporting characters (mostly outlaw bikers and spaced-out hippies) are sufficiently quirky, the prose is excellent, and the mystery feels a whole lot less artificial than something by, say, Harlan Coben or James Patterson. And, if you like 70's folk rock, you'll probably have a soundtrack playing in the back of your mind the whole way through. THE DO-RE-MI is also interesting in that it tackles some deep spiritual themes without ever getting preachy or predictable the way most "Christian" novels do. Yes, the "Hickey Family Mystery series" might sound like something stupid made for the Hallmark channel, but, thankfully, the Hickeys aren't anything like the Waltons. Unless I'm forgetting an episode in which John-Boy Walton beat somebody to death with a tire iron.
Displaying 1 of 1 review