Exotic Yet Familiar

If you have not already happened across it, my latest Kirkus Reviews column is devoted to a critique of John Straley’s quirky new novel, Cold Storage, Alaska. I write, in part:

Straley relates in an author’s note that he intended Cold Storage, Alaska to be “a tribute to one of my favorite genres: screwball comedy.” And it’s a fact that there’s considerable humor in these pages. (I had to periodically remind myself that this book was not concocted by the same guys who gave us the 1990s Alaska-set TV hit Northern Exposure, though it might well have been.) It’s also true that this poetic, often-tender work--rather reminiscent of Richard Russo’s small-town narratives (Empire Falls, etc.)--could be shelved in
bookstores under General Fiction as justifiably as under Crime Fiction. Yet illegalities provoke much of the action taking place here, and like so many exceptional works in this genre, Cold Storage, Alaska shows that extreme circumstances can occasionally force people to be stronger and more resilient than they thought possible.

You’ll find the whole piece here.

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.

Straley at the Mike

Alaska detective novelist John Straley (whose last novel was 2001’s Cold Water Burning) is scheduled to be Elizabeth Foxwell’s guest on It’s a Mystery, a weekly production of WEBR radio in Fairfax, Virginia. The show is set to be Webcast at 11 a.m. ET. Click here to listen. (If you miss hearing it live, you should be able to catch the audio clip later at Foxwell’s It’s a Mystery Web site.) In addition, Foxwell plans to commemorate what would be mystery writer Dorothy B. Hughes’ 102nd birthday, on August 10, by playing a classic radio production of Hughes’ 1942 novel, The Fallen Sparrow, starring Robert Young, Maureen O’Hara, and Walter Slezak.