The Angels Will Not Care - Hardcover

Straley, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553106422 ISBN 13: 9780553106428

Publisher: Bantam, 1998

Synopsis

From award-winning author John Straley comes a masterfully plotted, stunningly original new mystery as beautifully stark and delightfully unpredictable as the Alaskan landscape he has so perfectly captured.

Trouble is Cecil Younger's business. As a private investigator, it comes with the territory. But lately the kind of trouble he's seen is definitely not good for business. Getting blamed for a friend's suicide has hurt both his conscience and his reputation. And things have gone straight to hell since then. His most thrilling case of late: surveillance of a lawyer's chicken coop to see who's stealing her fowl.

Enter Sonny Walters of the Great Circle Cruise Lines, whose first-class ship has a first-class problem. It seems there's some controversy surrounding the ship's doctor. More than that, Mr. Walters won't say, except that he'll give Cecil free rein--as well as free passage and an unlimited bar tab--to get to the bottom of the unsavory rumors. Younger jumps at the opportunity.

Soon he, housemate Toddy, and live-in love Jane Marie set sail on the S.S. Westward. All Cecil expected to find was an incompetent doctor and the excuse the cruise line needed to fire him. Instead what Cecil finds is a lot worse. First of all, the accommodations are little better than steerage. Second, the free bar tab turns out not to be so free. And then there is Sonny Walters himself, who seems to change from Captain Steubing to Captain Bligh the instant the ship launches. But worst of all is that amid the limbo contests, bird-watching, and bridge tournaments, enough well-to-do passengers are going belly-up to ruin everyone's vacation.

Cecil was hired to conduct a discreet investigation. But when he finds himself the target of violence, discretion is the last thing on his mind. Adding insult to injury, a hotshot rival PI turns up and points an accusing finger at the perfect suspect: Cecil Younger. Suddenly Cecil is out of his depth, far from home, and thinking of only one thing--survival. By the time the S.S. Westward makes landfall up the Alaskan coast, Cecil may just wish he was back chasing chickens in Sitka instead of sleeping with the fishes.
John Straley lives in Sitka, Alaska, with his young son and wife, a marine biologist who studies whales. He is the Shamus Award-winning author of The Woman Who Married a Bear, The Curious Eat Themselves, The Music of What Happens, and Death and the Language of Happiness.

About this title

Review:

If Cecil Younger, John Straley's Alaska P.I., plied his trade in the lower 48, he'd probably have to work another job to pay his rent. As it is, he barely ekes out a living chasing chickens as well as two-legged deadbeats in Sitka, where he lives with an autistic roommate and a part-time lover who's a lot more ambitious than he is. So when he's offered a job investigating why so many people are dying on the SS Westward, Straley takes readers along on a luxury cruise in the icy waters of the Inland Passage. L'Inconnue de la Seine is a very unusual travel club--while most of its members are in ill health to begin with, there's something besides coincidence that's killing them before their time. Is it the ship's doctor who's responsible, or are there more sinister forces at work? When Cecil stumbles onto the truth behind the escalating mortality rates, he's rudely put ashore on an island inhabited only by bears. Fortunately for him, his girlfriend is a marine biologist who not only knows how to make a gourmet dinner out of sea slugs but can also talk a hungry bear out of having her and Cecil for dessert. What makes Straley's series so interesting are his extraordinary descriptive talents--if this is as close to Alaska as the reader of these finely wrought novels ever gets, it's almost as good as being there. --Jane Adams

From the Publisher:

Praise For John Straley:

"Now and then a writer dares to flout the rules and, in so doing, carves out a niche that belongs to him alone. John Straley's novels are like no others." --San Diego Tribune

"The voice is so original that it can only belong to John Straley....Definitely up there with the great ones."
--Chicago Tribune

"Straley is one of the best prose stylists to emerge from the genre in a long time."
--San Francisco Chronicle

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0553106422
• ISBN 13: 9780553106428
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240