The Music of What Happens - Hardcover

Straley, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 055309677X ISBN 13: 9780553096774

Publisher: Bantam, 1996

Synopsis

Taking on the case of a woman who is convinced her custody battle is part of a conspiracy to take her son from her, Alaskan private eye Cecil Younger prepares to confront a state senator, only to become involved in a murder. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

"I never find the smoking gun or the lead pipe with the bloody fingerprints on it, because everyone is looking for those. I find everything else, everything that has been left in the overturned rooms: the surface that wasn't blood-spattered, the dust on the knickknacks and family photo albums, but not on the exceptionally clean retirement plaque; the music on the radio in the empty hallway after everyone has been taken to jail or the morgue. I do this because there is always trace evidence of innocence, and innocence is largely overlooked, even by a man oiling a gun with a child crying in the background on the day before a killing." That voice is so original it can only belong to Straley, who introduced us to Alaskan investigator Cecil Younger in The Woman Who Married a Bear and The Curious Eat Themselves. This time out, Younger is trying to help the sister of an old girlfriend keep custody of her little boy. The wealthy, powerful family she has married into says she's unstable, an unsuitable mother -- but their opposition has sinister roots.

From the Publisher:

A defense investigator working out of Sitka, in the Alaskan coastalarchipelago, Cecil Younger walks a narrow line between the truth and what hisclients pay him to find....The Music of What Happens.

Younger's got the child custody case from hell, and a client to match. Shrill,confrontational, and obsessed, Priscilla DeAngelo is sure her ex is conspiringwith a state senator to wrest her son from her. When she storms off to Juneaufor a showdown, Younger's custody case swiftly turns into a murder. Fired fromher defense team, Younger stays with the investigation. He's not sure whatkeeps him bulldogging the case--Priscilla's sister, his lost love; his regardfor truth as a rare commodity; or the head injury Priscilla's ex gave him--buthe won't let go until it's solved.

But this time, the truth is less likely to set him free than to get himkilled....

Copyright © 1996 by John Straley

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 055309677X
• ISBN 13: 9780553096774
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224