Young adults always have been underrepresented as mystery heroes, but Keith Snyder has made a grand start with wit and style with his debut "Show Control," and now in "Coffin's Got the Dead Guy on the Inside."

Jason Keltner started his adult life as a sometimes-starving writer of electronic music in urban Southern California, but along the way was recruited by Norman Platt, a friend with mysterious government connections, to perform odd tasks for enough money to keep his beater of a car together and himself away from McJobs.

This time, he's paid $3,000 to "babysit" Paul Reno, who was Jason's friend until he cheated with Jason's now-ex-wife. Taking him into Marengo Manor, the beat-up rental house he shares with a number of free-floating housemates, immediately plunges Jason and his friends Martin and Robert into the murder of a virtual reality and multimedia guru, the theft of a mysterious black box, and being chased down California's highways by hordes of bad guys driving fleets of Tauruses. Along the way, Jason flees to the desert, hides out in motels, learns to counter the bad guys with random acts and tries to finish Untitled #23, his latest composition.

Like the title, Snyder writes a tale equally offbeat and frequently funny and Jason and his friends hold black belts in the art of the deadpan quote. In the motel hiding from the bad guys, Jason says, "I'm going to get some sleep."

"I'll wake you if anyone breaks in and kills us."

"Just put the No Killing tag on the doorknob so the maid knows."

Snyder's book is full of bon mots like this, and Keltner's an appealing hero whether giving himself five points for working Ralph Waldo Emerson into an Afrobeat percussive jam or standing off the bad guys in front of the manor with lines like, "How about we all just stand here and bristle with armamnt until someone in a condo glances over, sees her worst fears confirmed about those losers who live in the Manor, and calls nine-one-one. Cops race up in two, three hours, and that's that."

-- Bill Peschel
Book page editor, Rock Hill (S.C.) Herald