Dufresne’s latest novel earns accolades from the New York Times


John Dufresne’s latest novel, No Regrets, Coyote, has earned accolades from the New York Times Sunday Book Review.

It is the Creative Writing professor’s eighth book, and his first venture into crime fiction.

No Regrets, Coyote“I have typically written literary and mainstream fiction, so I decided to push myself this time in a different direction,” Dufresne said. “Usually my stories deal with love, death, grief, abandonment and other domestic elements. This novel has these but with the element of a crime that needs to be solved.”

The “ghoulishly funny crime novel,” as described by the New York Times review, follows Wylie “Coyote” Melville, a volunteer forensic consultant for the Everglades County Police Department, as he solves a murder-suicide case. The loopy plot includes a visit to Santa’s workshop at the North Pole and a cartoonish cast of Russian hit men, crooked lawyers, and homicidal cops. The New York Times review goes on to describe Dufresne as “an original talent” whose humor is “…frightfully dark, but it’s also quite dazzling.”

Dufresne is currently working on a second crime novel with the same essential characters from No Regrets, Coyote.

“It’s very gratifying and validating to know the New York Times think my venture into crime fiction is a success,” Dufresne said. “I hope to write a novel as intriguing and well-received as this one.”

No Regrets, Coyote was published in July by W. W. Norton & Company.

Dufresne’s writing and teaching careers span three decades, having published numerous books, stories, plays, monologues, screenplays and guides on the craft of fiction writing. His novels Louisiana Power & Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little were both named New York Times Notable Books of the Year in 1994 and 1997, respectively. Dufresne joined the FIU Department of English in 1989. In 2012, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He has a Doctor of Literature from Worcester State College.

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