Web Site:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1380123.John_Holt

Books on Amazon:

Coyote Nowhere: In Search of America's Last Frontier
Arctic Aurora
Hunted: A Novel
Knee Deep in Montana's Trout Streams
Guide Wars
Chasing Fish Tales
Montana Fly Fishing Guide East: East of the Continental Divide
Montana Fly Fishing Guide West: West of the Continental Divide

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. by Sanyika Shakur
  Posted on 30 Sep 2008 in African American, Crime Fiction, Fiction Reviews
  

  Shakur seems lost in a prison-induced dreamland where people can blow away countless others with impunity, cause the deaths of innocent bystanders, deal drugs, break any law they want then get arrested only to have all of the charges magically disappear. Not content with this far-fetched fantasy, the author then has Lapeace getting married barefoot and immersed in the natural world as though none of the murderous mayhem ever happened. Bad cops and snitches are killed. All is right with the world in Shakurland.

• Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness
  Posted on 04 Sep 2008 in Anthropology, Non-Fiction Reviews, Psychology, Science
  

  Jaynes, a psychologist who taught at Princeton up until his death in 1997, showed how ancient peoples from Mesopotamia to Peru could not “think” as we do today, and were therefore not conscious. Unable to introspect or contemplate metaphor-driven scenarios, they experienced auditory hallucinations — voices of gods actually heard as the Old Testament or the Iliad — which, emanating from the brain’s right hemisphere, told an individual what to do in circumstances of novelty or stress.

• Gas City by Loren Estleman
  Posted on 02 Jun 2008 in Crime Fiction, Fiction Reviews, Thrillers
  

  The characters and the settings in Gas City are rife with intriguing promise that never seems delivered. The story seems one- two-dimensional, never fully realized. That’s why I was unable to remember much of the book. There are a number of good scenes, but with so many quality novels out and about, including several by Estleman himself, these brief flashes of excellence are not sufficient to recommend the book.

• High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed
  Posted on 15 May 2008 in China, Environment, Nature, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sports, Travel
  

  All of this pales in comparison to the obscene madness that has now become the fate of Base Camp at Mount Everest. The 8,000-meter peaks of the Himalayas have become the unfortunate repositories for what is repugnant about human nature with very little innate goodness surviving. Dying climbers pushed aside, ignored and denied medical help while their equipment is stolen, greedy guides unethical to the point of criminal, drugs, alcoholism, prostitution – hell this could just as well be inner city New York or Saigon as 20,000 feet above sea level in what used to be one of the most remote landscapes on earth. Everest has become the poster child for this debauchery.

• Man vs Fish: The Fly Fisherman’s Eternal Struggle by Taylor Streit
  Posted on 25 Mar 2008 in Nature, Non-Fiction Reviews, Sports
  

  This is the tough time of the year for those such as myself who love and live to fly fish, to cast haphazardly-tied amalgams of fur and feather to wild trout while standing knee deep in the middle of a gorgeous trout stream surrounded by jagged mountains and vast native grass prairies that drift off in all directions.

• Double Cross By James Patterson
  Posted on 18 Mar 2008 in Crime Fiction, Fiction Reviews, Mystery
  

  I love John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series but always thought that his love scenes were clunkers to the point of being embarrassing. Compared to Patterson’s portrayals, MacDonald comes off like Arthur Miller.

• Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
  Posted on 07 Mar 2008 in Fiction Reviews, Military, Topics
  

  Often written in a quiet, understated style that belies the madness and violence that seep through every aspect of life in this jungle country more than forty years ago, Tree of Smoke subtly hammers the reader with an unceasing rage that is the true nature of war’s insanity.

• Fortune’s a River by Barry Gough
  Posted on 05 Mar 2008 in Canada, History, Non-Fiction Reviews, Topics
  

  By the closing years of the 18th century the stage was set for a major international confrontation over the Pacific Northwest Coast. Imperial Russia controlled the untamed Alaskan wilderness, Spain was expanding its holdings north from Mexico, Captain James Cook had claimed Northwest America for Great Britain and Captain Robert Gray had discovered the Columbia River, the historical basis for the United States’ claim to the river and the extensive watershed that extends eastward far into Montana.

• The Tin Roof Blowdown By James Lee Burke
  Posted on 03 Dec 2007 in Crime Fiction, Fiction Reviews, Mystery, Thrillers
  

  Because he’s a damn good writer James Lee Burke knows how to keep a plot going from start to finish with no loose ends or out-of-the-blue surprises that amateurishly attempt to explain and finish off a narrative.

• City of Fire By Robert Ellis
  Posted on 19 Nov 2007 in Crime Fiction, Fiction Reviews, Mystery, Thrillers
  

  There are red herrings aplenty, but once finished reading the novel I’m left with a sense of annoyance at these diversions, so often delightful necessities in other mysteries, but close to being filler in this one.