Cold Water Burning
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
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 asks Cecil to find her husband, Cecil agrees. After all, helping to get Richard exonerated during a tragic murder trial three years ago was one of the biggest successes of Cecil’s career. But why, if Richard’s name was cleared, is he MIA now? Patricia, Richard’s steadfast wife, has one guess: someone is after him. 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sixth Cecil Younger mystery, the low-key, rather inept PI from Sitka, Alaska, reopens an unsolved murder case. Three years earlier, Younger worked for Richard Ewers, a deckhand who was acquitted of murdering four people on the fishing scow Mygirl. Now Ewers is missing. His wife, Patricia, fearing revenge, asks Younger to find him, but the PI is hesitant because his mentor, retired police chief George Doggy, still thinks Ewers was guilty. Then a cop kills Patricia during a shootout at the trailer of Sean and Kevin Sands, whose parents were murdered on the Mygirl. A large sum of money, paid to Ewers by a tabloid newspaper, is missing, and Younger realizes he must follow its trail to discover what really happened three years before. During a climactic, white-knuckle chase at sea in the midst of a horrific storm, the easygoing Younger finds the answers, learning startling truths about trust and honesty. Straley's writing style is strong but, unlike most Alaska mystery writers (Dana Stabenow, Sue Henry), he allows the dazzling locale to serve only as background to his characters--Sitka's often feckless inhabitants. The psychology of Straley's antisocial characters, like violent Kevin and emotionally damaged Sean, drives these novels as much as does the action.
