Three Sisters: A Charlie Moon Mystery (Charlie Moon Mysteries)

What to say about a book so bad, even Doss' fans don't like it? That's the surprise here, not the book itself which, in spite of all the claims to the contrary, isn't all that different from the others: a sophomoric "romp" with cardboard characters, leaden geek humor, and an undertone of sociopathy that really should start bothering people.

For Stone Butterfly, I skipped a rock over the text, hitting some of the more idiotic high points. For Three Sisters, let's try the opposite: Dropping a large rock of attention into the first fifty pages. Of course, that means I can't spend much time on the (even for Doss) incredibly stupid final pages, in which a 340-lb woman who grew up as a feral child and now roams the San Juans clad in a jumpsuit made of a grizzly skin (no doubt that of the last grizzly sighted in the San Juans, in 1979), carrying a Bowie knife, capable of defeating a black bear in mano-a-mano, and with a heart that goes pitty pat over bodice ripper romances figures unexpectedly. And I don't get to discuss the scene where Charlie carries a woman up to his bedroom in three or four pages of double entendres without a clue that she expects to get -- Oh well.

About the sociopathy: What else do you call it, when the heroes, Charlie Moon and Scott Parris, banter while standing over the corpse of a woman who has apparently been mauled and eaten by a bear (as they do, again and interminably, at the scenes of not one but two separate fatal car accidents)? And her sisters -- both of them -- when they arrive on the scene, pause to muse on what a delectable "big boy" Charlie is? And the sisters, the day after the death, argue over which of them should set her sights on marrying the recently widowed husband. By the way, the loving husband, while on the phone with his wife a moment before the death, mentions her sisters and then thinks to himself that he'd be happy to sleep with either of them. Given the sexual mores of Dossland, maybe he means "sleep." I dunno.

Doss doesn't seem to have any grasp of the realities of human feeling. How else explain his remarking that a man whose just had his teeth knocked out "blubbered over them like a little kid whose ice cream cone has gone splat" (Dead Soul, I think)? Or the restaurant owner (Shadow Man) who, upon noticing that one of his customers has just had her brains splattered on the walls by a sniper, hopes it won't hurt business (and a sheriff who, went confronted by this concern, sees nothing odd about it)? Or the endless cruelties and amusements of "Nah-Nah" finger pointing at Sarah Frank (Snake Dreams, for example)?

But back to the fifty pages. We have, not surprisingly, three sisters to observe. One of them, Astrid, is murdered by a bear while she is talking on the phone with her husband, who is horrified by the sound of the bear "smacking its lips" (Extra point question: What do bears have in common with chickens? They can't smack their lips. But never mind.). Astrid, it turns out, is the youngest sister. It takes Doss a little while to decide this, but it's settled by the time we get through those fifty pages. What's odd about it is that the second sister is named Beatrice and the eldest (put on your thinking caps now) is Cassandra. Now how would that work? I had a friend who named his kids alphabetically. He's up to Fred. He started with (do you see where we're going?) Adam. How did Joe Spencer know he was going to have three children, which foreknowledge allowed him to name his kids backwards? I know, if there had been a fourth, he could have started over with Zelda, but still....

When the sisters arrive at the scene of mayhem, moments after Charlie and Scott have found the wreckage of Astrid's body, Charlie stops them from entering and seeing their mutilated sister. "I'm sorry," he says. And to further illustrate Doss' apparent lack of grasp of human reality, Doss adds, "And he meant it." After all, he might, like Doss most of the time, not. And Bea, being told that she can't look at her sister's mangled corpse (ever seen a picture of a bear kill?), does what any proper Doss woman would do. She stamps her foot! Hard! She does not say, "You let us see! RIGHT NOW!!" I don't know how Doss missed that one. And it turns out that this moment is when she falls in love with Charlie (although it is before she marries Astrid's husband and then... but that's all out of range).

The night after Astrid is eaten, Bea, alone at her secluded mansion, which is apparently (as events will illustrate) not far from Astrid's secluded mansion, lets her two very nervous dogs loose. The German shepherds (named Ike and Spike) make a beeline for the trees and disappear for three hundred pages. Bea quite literally thinks nothing of it. Except to reflect that it's fine, really, because keeping dogs is no "bed of roses." Suffice it to say that the murder of Astrid and the disappearance of the dogs are, as anyone with more sense than a Doss' character would guess, connected.

A few pages later, Charlie stands on a rock in the nearby wilderness and is observed by a "hairy, foul-smelling creature" covered in blood and with hard, unblinking eyes. It says, "Hrghrn" or something like that, and Doss warns us (foreshadowing! foreshadowing!) that this "might be a term of endearment." Which should lead you to one absolutely confident surmise: Whatever it is, is female.

Finally, on page 50 (I promised), there is the matter of the strawberries. You see, the accepted wisdom is that Astrid was eating strawberries in bed, and a bear, driven mad by the desire for strawberries, broke into her house and had her for, well, dessert. Ok, maybe accepted "wisdom" is a stretch. Let's just say that it's the theory ascribed to by everyone with a right to a theory -- the medical examiner, the cops, the family, etc. Interestingly enough, what's wrong with the theory is not, as you might think, how incredibly unlikely it is that a bear would do this, but that... well, let's just say, as a mercy to the poor unfortunates who haven't treated themselves to the book yet and hate spoilers, that the likelihood that Astrid was eating strawberries turns out to be A CLUE. Never mind that it's a clue that everybody who knew Astrid would have known about and, conveniently, none recalled.

Ok, my fifty pages are up. I wish I could go on, but I'm busy clearing my palate with a real mystery novel (Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, highly recommended) before wading -- in cheap mud boots I'll throw away after -- into Snake Dreams. You've been warned.

After having read all the books in the Charlie Moon series, this one has me baffled. Author James Doss has constructed a great character and now, suddenly, his writing style and presentation have changed drastically for the worse. This book is certainly cumbersome to read, with alterations between character dialogue and narration that makes things confusing and really cuts into the overall "voice" of the novel. This change in Doss' style has drawn more than a few critics and, should the series continue in this direction, I think it will be it's downfall.

I was caught off guard by Doss's new style, but I latched on to it and loved it. A great read, wonderful tongue-in-cheek commentaries on action and characters, and Daisy is still a delightful character, spunky and independant - moreso in this book. Doss has gotten better. His earlier poetic style is here, but not overdone. It was pure pleasure reading this mystery!

Since I purchased 13 of the 17 Charlie Moon series by James D Doss i have just started reading "Three Sisters." So far the series is great with copies of many hard to find. Don't wait to long to purchase. They are entertaining and fun to read.

I finished the book only to confirm to myself that this the worst plot ever. Where did this hairy ape girl come from - WOW!

Don't waste your time on this one !

Three Sisters was another page-turning, laugh-out-loud winner by James Doss. The "opinionated narrator" point-of-view is much more prominent in this novel than the first Charlie Moon mystery I read, and can (at times) be somewhat heavy-handed. The droll, tongue-in-cheek humor instilled by the witty omniscent narrator with phrases such as 'our brave hero' and 'the lovely damsel' etc., is well worth wading through the first quarter of the novel in which the majority of the drama in focused around the suspects and the victims rather than Charlie Moon and his colorful compatriots.

The plot revolves around the wealthy Spencer sisters: Astrid, Beatrice, and Cassandra--psychic TV sensation of "Cassandra Sees." When Astrid is brutally mauled by an apparent bear-attack, Charlie Moon is inevitably swept into the zany aftermath. He and best friend Chief of Police Scott Parris are called to the scene too late to do anything but summon the coroner--but was the lday killed by a bear, or something more sinister? Throw in a nutty eyewitness account about a Bigfoot sighting, speculation about levitating witches, and add a dash of spunky aunt Daisy Perika, and you've got yourself a wild ride.

Scandal ensues among the cast of suspects when the surviving sisters compete for Astrid's handsome husband Andrew Turner. Meanwhile, Cassandra's "visions" are becoming increasingly more dangerous as the lady psychic begins to "see" murders on air. When a reluctant ghosts proves shy, Cassie seeks the expert help of Daisy Perika to guest-star on her show, which touches off a chain reactions of incredibly hilarous events.

Good luck to any reader in untangling the multuple threads of this mystery. The spectacle of improbable events and Daisy's shenanigans are almost too entertaining to recall what you're supposed to be remembering and when.

Readers preferring hard-boiled mysteries may be disappointed by the zany, laugh-out-loud situational humor that abounds in a Charlie Moon novel, which may account for the mixed reviews. This series is often compared with Tony Hillerman, though the writing styles are markedly different. Hillerman's novels are much more straightforward mysteries with less characterization whereas humor is a key element in Doss's series.

wonderful..his story telling is grand. if you can be open minded about what i have
come to feel is his aging..(along with charlie and aunt daisy and everyone else
he writes of)..i think you will find the enjoyment factor of each book. for those
that were disappointed..wait a wee while then re-read it. relax and go with the
story an old man is giving you..there is something that touches the heart in every one of his tales..just try it..

The book was a little worn and the cover torn a little. But for the price it was acceptable

I hadn't read any of the Charlie Moon books for quite a while and I regret it.
James D. Doss has a way of not just bringing Ute culture into his writings but his characters are so richly written that putting the book down is difficult.
For a mystery this book, especially parts dealing with rascally Aunt Daisy will have you laughing out loud.
I will admit between paperbacks and Kindle I plan on revisiting all(or at least as many as I can find) of the Charlie Moon mysteries.

Good story