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

About the Author

John Straley lives in Sitka, Alaska, with his wife, a marine biologist who studies whales. He is the Shamus Award–winning author of The Angels Will Not Care, The Woman Who Married a Bear, The Curious Eat Themselves, The Music of What Happens, and Death and the Language of Happiness.

Reviews

After this case, Xanax-popping PI Cecil Younger of Sitka, Alaska, may make it a rule never to work for friends. Priscilla DeAngelo recruits him to help her in a bitter custody battle over her son. In no time, Cecil confronts her ex and finds himself flat on the pavement of a Seattle parking lot. Back in Juneau, Priscilla confronts Senator Wilfred Taylor, whom she suspects of conspiring to keep her son away from her, and the senator ends up dead in the stairwell. With Priscilla under arrest for murder, Cecil finds himself not only working on the custody case but reacquainting himself with an old flame, Priscilla's sister, Jane Marie, and locking horns with legendary defense attorney Harrison Teller, who seems to have a finger in every pie. A web of subplots adds to the depth of a story that encompasses possible organized crime, senatorial paper shredding and obsessive love. By its conclusion, the whirlwind ride leaves the reader gasping for breath, as Shamus Award-winning Straley (The Woman Who Married a Bear) tells a dark story illuminated by the wild vigor of both the Alaskan landscape and his own writing.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Against all reason, Priscilla DeAngelo is convinced there's a conspiracy to keep her six-year-old son away from her. Certainly her well-connected ex, Robert Sullivan, Jr., is just as determined to prevail in a custody battle over Bob III as Priscilla is--and he's a lot less flaky; but a conspiracy between the Sullivan family and Alaska State Senator Wilfred Taylor? Get real. Cecil Younger, the depressive-go-lucky investigator who describes himself as ``not much good at putting clues together,'' probably wouldn't have anything to do with Priscilla if she weren't the sister of his long-lost love Jane Marie DeAngelo. And after his informal first meeting with Robert and Bob leaves him empty-handed, with a wicked concussion, Priscilla doesn't want anything to do with him either. But when her own attempts at diplomacy fail even more spectacularly--her encounter with Taylor in an office stairwell leaves him dead and her under arrest-- Cecil steps back into the game. Be warned: From here on in, the action (multiple shaggy kidnappings, leaky dynamite, a reunion with Jane Marie) gets wild and woolly, with no time for a proper lunch, let alone model sleuthing. Notable, like Cecil's first two outings (The Curious Eat Themselves, 1993, etc.), for some charmingly loopy storytelling and some magical Alaskan scenery--though the magic may be due in part to the Xanax that Cecil's been popping since that concussion. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

If the truth will set him free, Sitka private investigator Cecil Younger is wise enough, or weary enough, to know he's a prisoner for life, because truth is the world's rarest commodity. In fact, in Cecil's world, even sanity seems in short supply. His client is a possibly paranoid woman convinced that her ex's politically connected father and an influential state senator are conspiring to deprive her of custody of her son. Cecil himself is just out of the psychiatric ward and floats in and out of sentience. And the ever-elliptical sister of his client, whom Cecil once loved, may also be maneuvering to gain custody. You can't tell the players without a Rorschach, but when the senator dies, Cecil's client is arrested, and strange people get even stranger. By his own admission, Cecil is not a very good investigator, but his creator is a gifted storyteller. Straley's evocation of coastal Alaska is as magical as the aurora borealis. He hears the music of what happens, and readers will be delighted by it. Thomas Gaughan

Edition details

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