Death and the Language of Happiness

Cecil Younger is a private investigator who takes comfort in the absurdity of the universe.  And the universe is obliging him with a joint phone call from his lawyer and his shrink to convey a message from another client: Someone will pay Cecil well to get rid of a problem...by killing a man.

Though the bank is about to foreclose on the house he shares with the autistic Toddy, Cecil knows he's not the man for this job.  Common sense tells him that murder just isn't a good career move.  But he does need the money, so Cecil decides to meet his potential client.  Ninety-seven-year-old William Flynn is none too clear on what's happened this week, but he's razor-sharp on the events of eight decades past.  What's happened this week is the murder of Angela Ramirez, a young woman who used to visit Flynn in the nursing home where he resides.  And the subsequent discovery in Flynn's room of the gun used to kill her--which makes him the prime suspect.  Flynn wants Cecil Younger to find, and kill, the man he believes is responsible for Angela's murder: her husband Simon Delaney.

Cecil, his shrink, and Flynn's attorney all figure it may help Flynn's defense to find Delaney, so Cecil sets out on the trail.  It leads him from a rough-and-tumble Aleutian Island town to the perilous streets of Seattle, from the pathetic murder of a drunken woman in a cheap hotel to a decades-old slaughter that is still reaching into the present.  And its dark and chilly grasp may extend to Cecil Younger himself....

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, and The Music of What Happens.  He is at work on his next Cecil Younger novel,
The Angels Will Not Care.