Review by Ed Quillen
Fiction – April 1994 – Colorado Central Magazine – No. 2 – Page 28
Mind Tryst
by Robyn Carr
Published in 1993
by St. Martin’s Paperbacks
ISBN: 0-312-92932-3
THIS IS BETTER than the run-of-the-mill psycho-drama spiced with sex and action, but that’s not why it gets reviewed here.
The imaginary landscape of Mind Tryst lies somewhere in Central Colorado — the fictional small town of Coleman in Henderson County.
Coleman is “a sleepy old mining and lumber town southwest of Denver.” There’s still some mining and timber, along with “ranching, hunting, camping, skiing, tourism.”
It has been “rediscovered by the baby boomers,” and it boasts a high school and a volunteer fire department and ambulance service.
“Pueblo is the closest city,” although Colemanites also make runs to Colorado Springs, Cañon City and Salida. And a character says someone “mentioned Salida and Pueblo, but those aren’t small towns,” which may come as a surprise to Salidans.
Since Coleman is in the “scenic Wet Mountain Valley,” it’s probably based on Westcliffe. How well does the author capture small-town life?
In many ways, pretty well. The heroine, an emigre attorney from southern California, sees the locals as friendly enough, but not willing to accept her. “The people of Coleman were cordial, but until you’ve entered a small town as a newcomer and tried to wedge your way in, it’s difficult to understand the kind of resistance there b to a new resident. It feels like hesitancy.”
That conforms to experience. A Silverton man said that “you become a local when people forget when you moved here.” A Kremmling woman once berated me as an outsider. I pointed out that we owned the newspaper and a home there, and that our children were born in Kremmling. “Just because a cat had kittens in the oven doesn’t make ’em biscuits,” she replied.
Back to the book. In most novels set in small towns, the local main cop is either an inept Barney Fife, a corrupt Boss Hogg, or a sharp homicide detective retired from the big city. Mind Tryst’s Bodge Scully is none of these — just a damn good rural sheriff, and he’s a welcome change from the clichés usually found in commercial fiction.
So far, so good, but Mind Tryst sometimes disappoints as a regional novel. Central Colorado is mostly a backdrop, not a player. No closed highways, no mud season, no mosquitoes, no survivalists.
Even so, Mind Tryst is suspenseful and entertaining, with enough local color so that you’ll find a hint of roman à clef.