Synopses & Reviews
An offbeat, often hilarious crime novel set in the sleepy Alaskan town of Cold Storage from the Shamus Award winning author of the Cecil Younger series.
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 at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the town is withering.
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. But Clive doesn’t realize the trouble he’s bringing home. His 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 Clive’s arrival turn the whole place upside down?
Synopsis
John Straley, a criminal investigator for the state of Alaska, lives in Sitka with his son and wife, a marine biologist who studies whales. He is the Shamus Award-winning author of The Curious Eat Themselves and The Woman Who Married a Bear and was appointed the Writer Laureate of Alaska in 2006.
Synopsis
Once a robust commercial outpost, Cold Storage, Alaska, has seen better days. Nearly everyone in town is either clinically depressed or perpetually drunk. Having just served a seven-year prison stint for his drug dealing days, Clive Cahon has every right to be both, but instead of hunkering down, he hatches a scheme. Using the money he may or may not have lifted from his previous crime partner, he opens a bar, Mouse Miller's Love Nest (named after a colorful local who was recently murdered). When Clive learns about a strange town ordinance that requires there to be as many churches as there are bars, he starts holding worship services at the bar on Sunday mornings, complete with scripture readings, sermons (which he delivers), and a lively band. But just when he thinks he's successfully shed his old life, a police officer from the neighboring city starts poking around the bar--and something tells Clive the cop isn't there to drink or listen to a sermon...
About the Author
The youngest of five children, John Straley was born in 1953. He received a BA in English and a certificate of completion in Horse Shoeing. He has brown eyes and likes jokes and a wide variety of literature and music. He is the Shamus Award-winning author of The Curious Eat Themselves and The Woman Who Married a Bear and was appointed the Writer Laureate of Alaska in 2006. John Straley lives with his wife, Jan, a prominent whale biologist, in a bright green house on the beach in Sitka, Alaska, where he works as a criminal defense investigator by day and sleeps, writes, and plays with his band, The Big Fat Babies, whenever he can.