John Straley: 10 books

“Strong and sobering … with his storyteller’s sense of dramatic action [Straley’s] in his glory.”—The New York Times Book Review “One of the strongest series since Hillerman set up shop.”—Kirkus Reviews Cecil Younger is an investigator for the public defender in Sitka,...

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...

“Highly refreshing setting, a great cast of characters and an intriguing plot.”—The Bloomsbury Review “Atmospheric.”—The New York Times Book Review “Flashes of the dark poetry of Ross MacDonald.”—Chicago Tribune “A rich stew of deception and menace.”—Anchorage...

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...

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....

Alaska, 1935: Slippery Wilson is on his way out of town when he runs into a woman, her neice, and a crashed car. His life is about to get a lot more complicated. It's 1935 and jobs are scarce, but Slippery Wilson walks off his job at a logging camp after a gruesome accident kills a coworker....

In the not-so-distant future in Cold, Storage, Alaska, a man is kidnapped from prison and placed in a drug-induced haze. Why? To find a missing nuclear bomb. It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of...

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,...

**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,...

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...