Clifford Hickey is a folk musician looking for the big break that will save him from his back-up plan, USC law school. But when he arrives in Evergreen for a folk festival and discovers his brother Alvaro is the prime suspect in a murder, his plans change.
THE DO-RE-MI, a small town Northern California folk festival, 1972
Evergreen is a different town than the last time Clifford Hickey visited, only a year ago. Then it was an Eden, a garden of peace and delights, of music and lovely hippies sharing all they had. Now it's the site of a range war. Bikers have descended upon the place to poach from the hippies' marijuana plantations. And a home grown boy gets murdered the very night Clifford arrives.
Clifford, a recent college graduate, and his brother Alvaro are scheduled to perform at the Evergreen folk festival. But when sheriffs crash the brothers' reunion at Alvaro's camp amongst the redwoods, Alvaro runs.
In the effort to clear his brother, who is charged with the murder of a sheriff's nephew, Clifford makes deadly enemies of a gang of outlaw bikers led by a miniature sociopath. When he seeks help from hippies living in Evergreen's communes, they shun him. So do the locals. Which means he's on his own, unless the girlfriend of the murdered boy chooses to trust him, or unless he decides to call for help from Pop, detective Tom Hickey. But Tom's busy trying to keep Clifford's mama from returning to the sanitarium.
Excerpt
I had watched Alvaro pelt a mountain lion with a slingshot, just for the sport of escaping from a riled mountain lion. I'd heard his confessions about robbing pimps in Tijuana when he was six years old. He had earned three bronze stars in Vietnam though he viewed the war as a feud the locals ought to settle on their own. Alvaro was brave but not loco. He wasn't going to stand and fight six armed men with badges.
He only grabbed the Browning and ran. He never raised it or turned, yet the two lead deputies fired. A bullet ripped through the tent, while my brother dashed into the forest. Four deputies chased him, tripping and slashing with arms and pistols through the underbrush.
Off in the forest, Alvaro yowled. I waited in horror, one eye on the guns leveled at me, the other eye cocked in the direction my brother had gone. I didn't breathe.
Professional Reviews
from Booklist
The Do-Re-Mi
Kuhlken (The Loud Adios, 1991) is back with another tale of the Hickey family. Although father Tom has retired from investigating, his son, Clifford, inadvertently finds himself trapped doing some sleuthing of his own. An amateur guitarist, Clifford, on his way to law school, is scheduled to perform at a folk festival in Evergreen, California. It is the summer of 1972, so the area is full of hippies, war protesters, marijuana farmers, and outlaw bikers. Clifford is supposed to meet his brother, Alvaro, a combat-trained veteran who served in Vietnam, at his campsite. An armed sheriff’s posse interrupts their reunion, and Alvaro vanishes into the woods. The sheriff arrests Clifford, who later learns that someone has murdered the sheriff’s nephew, and Alvaro is the prime suspect. Trapped in a battle between the law, rival biker gangs, the locals, and his own family, Clifford has an intricate puzzle to solve. Readers will enjoy this tale, which captures the history and atmosphere of 1970s California as well as the complex dynamics of a fascinating family.
from Kirkus Reviews
The Do-Re-Mi
Kuhlken revisits the Hickey family in a tale as sensitive and heartfelt as it is action-packed.
The often violent, paradoxically principled Tom Hickey debuted in 1991, when Kuhlken won St. Martin's Best First Private Eye Novel award, for The Loud Adios. Lying fallow hasn't hurt the Hickeys, who've only become more introspective and complex. World War II is now ancient history, and Tom, though still vital and charismatic, has yielded center stage to his son Clifford, who loves and admires the old man without the least desire to emulate him. Clifford's a musician, or maybe a lawyer -- he hasn't decided yet. One August day in 1972, while still betwixt and between, he shows up in tiny Evergreen, Calif., to find himself in the middle of a small war. Local hippies want to grow and keep their marijuana crop; marauding bikers want to grab and market it big-time. Meanwhile, the local sheriff likes Alvaro Hickey, Clifford's stormy petrel brother, for killing the nephew of one of his deputies. Clifford thinks it's a frame-up. So does Tom, when he arrives in response to Clifford's SOS. Or do they? What it always boils down to, from the Hickeys' dark perspective, is that everyone is capable of anything.
Crime, punishment and redemption. Kuhlken's sixth is by far his best.
from January Magazine
The Do-Re-Mi
Ken Kuhlken first burst onto the crime-fiction scene with The Loud Adios, which won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s Press Award for Best First Private Eye novel in the year 1991. Set in 1942, it introduced private eye Tom Hickey and his family, and their story continued through two other books, The Venus Deal and The Angel Gang. But as the time period of the Hickey novels stretched into the 1950s, it appeared that the thread had run itself out. Tom Hickey is back, however, in Kuhlken’s latest, The Do-Re-Mi. Set in the summer of 1972, Tom Hickey is a supporting character to his son Clifford, a disaffected soon-to-be law student who drives north into the redwoods of Northern California to attend and play at a folk jamboree in the town of Evergreen, and reconnect with his adopted brother, Alvaro, a barely balanced Vietnam veteran and fellow musician who is all too familiar with the tactics of jungle warfare. Only hours after their reunion, both brothers are rudely awakened from their sleep at Alvaro’s campsite by the sound of gunfire. Local law enforcement suspects Alvaro of having killed a deputy’s son. The deceased was also somehow involved with a violent motorcycle gang called The Cossacks. Alvaro grabs his Browning rifle and heads for the hills. Faced with the pressures of trying to find the real murderer, locating Alvaro, and navigating the centrifugal pressures of the town’s natural antagonists, Clifford eventually realizes he has to call in a professional, none other than Tom Hickey. The elder Hickey could have more than carried this story, but Kuhlken was looking for a different angle. In bringing Clifford Hickey front and center, the author provides his readers with the quintessential anti-hero for crime fiction. And yet the symbiotic way in which these two generations work together to help save the unpredictable (and perhaps unsteady) Alvaro gives the reader hope that Clifford will, in fact, turn into his dad. I suppose that at one level, The Do-Re-Mi exists in a space that might be described as “James Crumley meets Roger L. Simon.” But along with the interplay between the characters, the poignant comments and the laugh-out-loud one-liners, The Do-Re-Mi contains more than a trace of the bitter aftertaste that the Summer of Love and the promise of the 1960s not only failed to pan out, but left America in the throes of the confusion and paranoia of the 70s. -- Stephen Miller
This cozy murder mystery takes place aboard luxury liner, Queen Elizabeth II, as wealthy couple celebrate their silver wedding anniversary with family and friends.
