Wolfe draws knowledgeably on the culture of a vanished New Mexican tribe in his latest novel of the contemporary West (after The Lake Dreams the Sky), but fails to breathe much life into his present-day protagonists. Jack Miller is a swaggering, play-by-his-own-rules art collector who has made a fortune peddling forged Southwestern antiquities. Now in retirement, he discovers the body of a German tourist who had happened upon a major find: a hidden cache of pottery belonging to the Mimbres, a Southwestern tribe that died out long before Columbus even considered the New World. Jack locates the cache and grabs the prize piece, a bowl depicting a beautiful parrot trainer, but—perhaps due to the effects of an insect sting—the female spirit of the trainer begins to haunt Jack's imagination. There's also a real-life woman to contend with, archeologist Lucy Perelli, whose moral approach to pottery hunting clashes with Jack's more fluid ethic. As Wolfe steers Jack and Lucy toward the expected romance, they are joined by a clownish French theorist named Henri Bashé and his film crew, and trailed by two lowlife characters called Rat and Raw Bone. Despite their constant banter, Jack and Lucy don't have much chemistry, and the brief discussion of white exploitation of American Indian culture is too lightweight to salvage a predictable plot. Readers with an interest in the Southwest will enjoy Wolfe's playful take on the culture, but those further afield won't find much to hold their attention. Regional author tour.(Feb. 1)
