Slip’s Up

This one sneaked up on me. Seven years after Alaskan author John Straley published his last detective Cecil Younger novel, Cold Water Burning, he’s suddenly back in bookstores with a historical standalone, The Big Both Ways (Alaska Northwest Books). Of the plot, Independent Crime’s Nathan Cain writes:

The story begins when logger Slip Wilson walks off the job after seeing one of his coworkers die in a gruesome accident. He has two grand in a tin and he’s planning on going back east and settling down. Unfortunately for him, he happens upon Ellie Hobbes, a pretty blonde communist with a union organizer’s corpse in the trunk of her car. One death leads to another, and soon Slip, Ellie, and Ellie’s young niece Annabelle are forced to flee Seattle in a dory while they are pursued by private security thugs, union members and the police.

I used to like Shamus winner Straley’s Younger stories, though I haven’t read them in a long while. Too bad the author has had to go to a small publisher like Alaska Northwest Books to get this one into print, but at least it gives us all a chance to rediscover his work.