John Straley

In this gripping tale of survival, betrayal and murder set in the Pacific Northwest in 1935, Slip Wilson is just trying to find work, food and a little justice when he hooks up with a bottle-blonde, Ellie Hobbes, who drags him into her edgy, ragtag life. At the last minute, Ellie, a notorious red union organizer who faces mounting problems with anti-union forces, and her young niece hop aboard the same rickety boat Slip is escaping on that's traveling...

Cecil Younger is a man who takes comfort in the absurdity of the universe. And the universe is obliging him, with a joint phone call from his lawyer and his shrink, to convey a job offer from another client: all Cecil has to do is kill a man. Though common sense tells him murder just isn't a good career move, his finances tell him it can't hurt to meet his potential client. The decision will lead Cecil from a pathetic small-time murder to a decades-old...

"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 his time trying to forget about the past. Then one day, an old family friend grabs Gloomy from his off-site work station and smuggles him away in a hollow tree trunk....

P.I. Cecil Younger works out of Sitka, Alaska, a place of stark beauty and unpredictable danger, where a man paid to look for the truth can just as easily disappear and even the angels will not care. Cecil Younger never thought it would come to this--providing surveillance for a chicken coop being raided by a fowl thief. But things have not exactly been breaking right lately for the Alaskan P.I. The logical thing to do? Take a vacation cruise. Well,...

Shamus Award–winner John Straley returns to his critically acclaimed Cecil Younger detective series, set in Sitka, Alaska, a land of perfect beauty and not-so-perfect locals.
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...

"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...

"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...