Cold Water Burning

The sixth novel in John Straley's Alaska P.I. series takes Cecil Younger into rough waters as he grapples with his new life and past, unsolved murders.

Three years ago someone brutally killed four people on the scow Mygirl. In a crowded courtroom, Cecil Younger helped the accused go free. Now the man charged with the Mygirl murders has disappeared. As a new father, Cecil just wants to move on from the Mygirl killings, but finds he can't just walk away when more and more people associated with the case end up suddenly, separately, but most assuredly dead.

Younger is certain that someone is trying to finish the grisly job begun on the Mygirl. He must discover the truth behind what happened three years ago before he can settle what's happening now. With a storm headed straight for Sitka, he must chase down a wooden sloop on the wind-lashed sea. Out in the lethal storm Younger will come face-to-face with the shocking truth that has already twisted so many lives--and now could end his own.

The youngest of five children, John Straley was born in Redwood City, California, in 1953. He received a BA in English from the University of Washington and, at the urging of his parents, a certificate of completion in horse shoeing. John never saw himself living in Alaska (where there are no horses left to shoe), but when his wife, Jan, a prominent whale biologist, announced she was taking a job in Sitka, the two headed north and never left. John worked for thirty years as a criminal defense investigator in Sitka, and many of the characters that fill his books were inspired by his work. Now retired, he lives with his wife in a bright green house on the beach and writes in his weather-tight office overlooking Old Sitka Rocks. The former Writer Laureate of Alaska, he is the author of ten novels.