John Straley

Criminal defense investigator Cecil Younger spends his days coaching felons on how to avoid incriminating themselves. When Cecil follows a lead from a defendant and walks out of a shady apartment complex with a suitcase containing fifty thousand dollars in cash, he suddenly finds himself in violation of one of his own rules: Nothing good comes of walking around with a lot of someone else's money. In a single day, Cecil manages to find a deep freeze...

"Cecil Younger, local Alaskan investigator, is neither good at his job nor at staying sober. When an old Tlingit woman hires him to discover why her son, a big game guide, was murdered, he takes the case without much conviction that he'll discover anything the police missed. He really just needs the extra cash. But after someone tries to kill him, Younger finds himself traveling across Alaska to ferret out the truth in the midst of conspiracies, politics,...

When Louise Root, a new client of Cecil Younger, is found murdered, the private investigator finds himself in the middle of an environmental law violation that has deadly repercussions. Cecil finds he is unable to leave behind Root, especially after her ex-lover Hannah asks him for help. On top of it all, Global Mining, the company that runs the gold mine where Root's body was found, hires Younger to get the dirt on an environmentalist who has a connection...

"Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you're zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity in the mid-20th Century, at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the population is shrinking every...