"Diagnosed with terminal cancer, retired marine biologist Delphine is on the brink of throwing in the towel. She has outlived her PI husband and worries she’s become a burden to her son and his growing family. One night, while contemplating how to go on, Delphine witnesses a violent argument between a man and his girlfriend. When Delphine discovers the woman has gone missing along with her young child, Delphine embarks on a quest to find them.
What begins as a chance encounter balloons into a rescue mission across the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, Delphine encounters the dregs of humanity—grappling with schemers, kidnappers, and murderers—as well as its joys. With the help of a few friends, a retired PI, and a queer biker gang, Delphine is determined to see her mission through … knowing full well it may be her last.
While Big Breath In stands alone, longtime Straley fans will recognize the characteristic wit, heart, and contemplation of life that threads through every one of his books—and discover a new heroine to fall in love with.
“Once again, John Straley serves up a masterclass in storytelling with this page-turning tale of mystery, loss, and kinship. You’ll instantly fall for Delphine, the main character with a heart as big as the whales she researches. Straley has imbued every page of this novel with a deeply personal love that hits you hard.”—Don Rearden, author of The Raven’s Gift"
"Things in the sleepy fishing town of Cold Storage, Alaska, are changing. It’s the summer of 1968; the men are wearing their hair long, the Vietnam War is at its height, and multiple assassinations have gripped the country. But some things remain the same. Ellie’s
bar is still the place to catch up on the town gossip, and there’s a lot to talk about, from the boys who have returned from the war (and the ones who haven’t), to the robberies that are plaguing the locals, to the new guy in town: a famous monk from Kentucky.
Ellie, herself a fugitive of sorts, is curious about this “Brother Louis” and worries about his motives, but he seems harmless enough. However, when a handful of other outsiders arrive to town and start poking around the bar and asking
questions, she begins to have reservations. Have they followed this mysterious monk, rumored to be the famous author Thomas Merton, to Cold Storage? And what is it that they want, particularly the inept FBI agent with the strange name:
Boston Corbett?
Inspired by assassination conspiracy theories, the life of Thomas Merton, and the changing tide of the ’60s, Blown by the Same Wind is a coming-of-age story for the town of Cold Storage itself."
"To his chagrin, Alaskan PI Cecil Younger learns his teenage daughter has launched her own detective agency. But when her first case goes awry, she’s going to need some help from an unlikely source: her father, who’s currently locked up in prison.
The verdict from the three-judge panel is in. Cecil Younger, bumbling criminal defense investigator and totally embarrassing father, has been sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for his involvement in … well, a number of things, ranging from destruction of private property to killing a guy. But compared to the original twenty-five-year sentence, it’s not so bad. His success with getting his sentence reduced has attracted the attention of his fellow inmates, and one man, “Fourth Street,” reaches out for advice for his upcoming parole hearing in exchange for protection and companionship.
When he isn’t reading Adrienne Rich or James Baldwin with Fourth Street, Cecil spends his time filling up large yellow legal pads. He writes, mostly, about his teenage daughter, Blossom, who is on a Nancy Drew–like quest to help her friend, George, discover the truth about her biological parents, which turns out to be complicated. Shortly after submitting a mail-in genetics test, George learns she is the infamous “Baby Jane Doe” who was kidnapped from her Native mother shortly after she was born. A media and legal circus quickly ensues, and George’s reunion with her birth family isn’t the heartwarming story the journalists hoped it would be. There is an even darker secret about the baby-snatching case, a secret threatens to destroy not just George’s family—but Cecil’s as well."
"From the wild and wonderful mind of Shamus Award–winning author John Straley comes a poetic masterpiece that explores the ugly truths of the prison industrial complex, the crumbling state of humanity, the role memory plays in the formation of the self, and much more.
It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends histime trying to forget about the past.
Then one day, Gloomy is snatched from his off-site work station. Instead of celebrating his newfound freedom, Gloomy comes unmoored—he feels he belongs in prison. But his kidnappers believe Gloomy knows where a second nuclear warhead is hidden and demand to know where it is. The clock is ticking, and Gloomy knows he needs to find the missing warhead fast, or his wife, his friends, and the entire town of Cold Storage will be obliterated. The only problem is he has no idea where it is.
As Gloomy struggles to escape, the memories he fought hard to repress begin to creep out from the strange corners of his mind, first in rivulets, then in waves. In a drug-induced haze, Gloomy makes a discovery that may just bring him the closure he desires—if it doesn’t kill him first."
"In the third entry to the series, Alaska P.I. Cecil Younger is fresh out of rehab with a head wound, a child custody case from hell, and the clients to match.
Confrontational and obsessed, Priscilla DeAngelo is sure her ex is conspiring with a state senator to wrest her son from her, and thus, she hires Cecil Younger to investigate. This is the first time Younger has to deal with lawyers in flashy suits and overused paper shredders. When she storms off to Juneau for a showdown, Younger’s custody case swiftly turns into a murder. Younger is fired from the defense team, but he can’t stop thinking about the case, and keeps on with the investigation alone. He’s not sure what keeps him involved. Is it Priscilla’s sister (his lost love)? His regard for truth as a rare commodity? Or the head injury Priscilla’s ex gave him?
But there’s one thing he knows: he won’t let go until it’s solved, even if it kills him."
"In the Alaskan town of Sitka, the living is tough and the crimes are aplenty … and plenty personal.
When 97-year-old William Flynn is accused of killing his neighbor, Angela Ramirez, he turns to private investigator Cecil Younger with an odd—and, frankly, rather incriminating—request. He wants Cecil to track down a man he believes witnessed Ramirez’s murder: her estranged husband, Simon Delaney. The only problem? Flynn doesn’t just want Cecil to find Delaney. He wants him to kill the man. Cecil knows that kind of thing would be bad for business, but he takes the job, hoping he can both convince Flynn to call off the manhunt and discover what really happened to his neighbor. But the old man isn’t making the job easy. He keeps confusing two different crimes: Angela Ramirez’s recent murder and an 80-year-old tragedy in which four American Legionnaires were killed during an Armistice Day Parade.
Cecil struggles to sort through the old man’s befuddled memories and dives into the search for Delaney, which takes him on a journey through Alaska history and all over the Pacific Northwest, from the Aleutian Islands to Centralia, Washington."
"Trapped on an Alaskan cruise line, PI Cecil Younger must expose a killer—and fast—or he may just find himself sleeping with the fishes.
Cecil Younger never thought it would come to this: running surveillance on a chicken coop that’s being raided by a fowl thief. But things have not exactly been breaking right lately for the Alaskan PI. The logical thing to do? Take a vacation, of course.
Well, it’s not exactly a vacation. Cecil has been paid to investigate a doctor aboard a cruise ship up the Alaskan coast following some complaints from his patients … that is, the patients who are still alive to complain. Worst of all, someone is leaving evidence pointing an accusing finger at Cecil. By the time the S.S. Westward makes landfall, Cecil will be wishing he was back guarding chickens."
"Criminal defense investigator Cecil Younger spends his days coaching would-be felons on how to avoid incriminating themselves. He even likes most of the rough characters who seek his services. So when Sherrie, a returning client, asks him to track down some evidence to clear her of a domestic violence charge, Cecil agrees. Maybe he’ll find something that will get her abusive boyfriend locked up for good.
Cecil treks out to the shady apartment complex only to discover the “evidence” is a large pile of cash—fifty thousand dollars, to be exact. That is how Cecil finds himself in violation of one of his own maxims: Nothing good comes of walking around with a lot of someone else’s money.
In this case, “nothing good” turns out to be a deep freeze full of drug-stuffed fish, a murder witnessed at close range, and a kidnapping—his teenage daughter, Blossom, is snatched as collateral for his cooperation. The reluctant, deeply unlucky investigator turns to an unlikely source for help: the misfit gang of clients he’s helped to defend over the years. Together, they devise a plan to free Blossom and restore order to Sitka. But when your only hope for justice lies in the hands of a group of criminals, things don’t always go according to plan.
“Straley humanizes slapstick mayhem in his exceptional seventh Cecil Younger mystery … Hilarious.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW"
"After years on the job as a private investigator in Sitka, Alaska, Cecil Younger doesn’t claim to have learned much about humanity as a whole, but he does know this: truth is a slippery thing.
When the wife of a former client comes to Cecil to ask for help finding her husband, Cecil agrees. After all, helping get Richard exonerated during a tragic murder trial three years ago had been one of the biggest successes of Cecil’s career. But why, if Richard’s name had been cleared, was he M.I.A. now? Patricia, Richard’s steadfast wife, has one guess: someone is after Richard. It’s no secret that Richard has a long list of enemies, not least of which are the family members of the dead. But things soon get complicated when Patricia is killed, sending Cecil on a desperate trip to sea to chase down the twisted truth."
"Cecil Younger, local Alaskan investigator, is neither good at his job nor at staying sober. When an old Tlingit woman hires him to discover why her son, a big game guide, was murdered, he takes the case without much conviction that he’ll discover anything the police missed. He really just needs the extra cash. But after someone tries to kill him, Younger finds himself traveling across Alaska to ferret out the truth in a midst of conspiracies, politics, and Tlingit mythology. High drama meets local color as Cecil Younger works to uncover the motive and identity of the killer.
“Highly refreshing setting, a great cast of characters and an intriguing plot.”—THE BLOOMSBURY REVIEW"
"When local woman Louise Root asks private detective Cecil Younger to investigate her rape at the Otter Creek gold mine, he agrees. After all, Louise is a close friend of his ex. Maybe helping her out could improve Hannah’s opinion of him. But before Cecil can make progress on the case, he witnesses Alaska state troopers fishing her body out of the ocean—not exactly the resolution he had in mind.
Despite the unfortunate end his last client met, Cecil finds himself inundated with requests from all sides: his old friend, Officer Doggy, wants help controlling the grieving Hannah; Cecil’s autistic roommate, Todd needs help finding his Labrador retriever; and the sleazy executives of Global Mining want dirt on a local environmental activist—a request even the bungling PI finds suspicious.
But Cecil also feels a responsibility to discover the truth behind Louise’s death. If Louise knew a secret that got her killed, Cecil needs to discover and expose the truth before he, too, is permanently silenced."
"Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you're Zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity in the mid-twentieth century, at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the population is shrinking every day.
Clive 'the Milkman' McCahon returns to his tiny Alaska hometown after a seven-year jail stint for dealing coke. He has a lot to make up to his younger brother, Miles, who has dutifully been taking care of their ailing mother—and, really, all of Cold Storage. Miles is a physician's assistant and the closest thing to a doctor this side of Sitka. But Clive doesn't realize the trouble he's bringing home. He's reformed now, and his dream is to open a bar-slash-church (a Cold Storage ordinance requires there to be as many churches in town as there are bars). Clive's vengeful old business partner is hot on his heels, a stick-in-the-mud state trooper is dying to bust Clive for narcotics, and, to complicate everything, Clive might be going insane—lately, he's been hearing animals talking to him. Will his arrival in Cold Storage be a breath of fresh air for the sleepy, depopulated town, or will it turn the whole place upside-down?"
