book review of The Buffalo Nickel by Pat Johnston

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I bought a cheap used copy of this 2007 novel because of the coin in the title, and due to our current year 2013 being the centennial year of the coin, of which a small photo of the buffalo side is illustrated on the front cover, along with a desert scene.

 

That small coin cover photo is just about the only thing of numismatic interest in the 203 page book. The title refers to one character having decorated the bracelets he sold with glued-on buffalo nickels, and the convenient tell-tale finding of a buffalo nickel evidently detached from one of those bracelets near the body of a murdered young woman.

 

The novel was printed by a vanity publisher, meaning the author paid for all the production costs himself. Even so, the publisher felt obliged to place a disclaimer on the back of the title page: "At the specific preference of the author, PublishAmerica allowed this work to remain exactly as the author intended, verbatim, without editorial input."

 

The writing is of Junior High School level, about what you might expect from inexperienced student writers submitting homework in Junior High, except for an occasional little error they'd be ashamed of.

 

And despite a bit of profanity, the prospective audience might also be Junior High School students, although that audience is imaginary because those young teen-agers rarely read.

 

Unfortunately the plot and the sequence of circumstances are so completely implausible that any audience of any reading-level will find themselves flinching uneasily. Not worth the partial summary often found in book reviews.