The Woman Who Married a Bear by John Straley

John Straley, a criminal investigator for the state of Alaska, lives in Sitka with his son and wife, a marine biologist who studies whales. Set against the modern Alaskan frontier and the surviving pantheism of its indigenous population, The Woman Who Married a Bear is a brooding and exotic novel that touches on mysteries far beyond the conventional. What he unearths is a virtual fairytale contrived to hide a primal conspiracy. The victim's mother, a Tlingit Indian, summons to her nursing home a local investigator named Cecil Younger. Sitka is hardly straight-laced, but murder is uncommon enough to be widely noted-like the Indian big-game guide killed by an ex-miner obeying voices from the earth's center. Rowdy youths party in the ancient Russian cemeteries, sitting on overturned gravestones. In addition to honest work, there is a lot of alcohol consumed and other people's money appropriated. Sitka, Alaska, is a subarctic port surrounded by snow-dusted mountains. satisfies on all levels.'- The Kansas City Star 'A rich stew of deception and menace.'- Anchorage Daily News 'Flashes of the dark poetry of Ross MacDonald.'- Chicago Tribune 'Atmospheric.'- The New York Times Book Review I look forward to digging into the second book, and hope that Younger takes his time to become a better man.'Highly refreshing setting, a great cast of characters and an intriguing plot.'- The Bloomsbury Review

The combination, in Straley’s hands, is potent. But Straley also brings a mythological element – the possibility that, as you may have guessed, a woman married a bear – that elevates the story to a mystical plane which I seek in fantasy and science fiction more often than in thrillers. An imperfect investigator/detective (I’m looking at you, Tess Monaghan and, to a lesser extent, Guido Brunetti) who has little regard for the system under which justice is dispensed, even when they work within it. This story, set in the early 1990s, has everything I want in a mystery. She knows the official version – that a mentally unstable man whom her son hired to help with hunting trips that her son guided killed him – but she wants to know the truth. A Native woman living in an assisted living facility hires him to find out the truth behind her son’s death. After working for – and being fired from – the public defender’s office in Alaska as an investigator, Younger advertises his own investigation services.

He has a serious alcohol problem and a wanderlust in this introduction to the character, he is still mourning his father, who has recently died, as well as mourning the loss of a romance and his six-month’s-long sobriety. In the preface, the author says that he once heard of a woman who married a bear, and he believed it.Ĭecil Younger is the son of a well-known judge in Alaska, but he’s a failure. The Woman Who Married A Bear is the first of the Cecil Younger novels, written by John Straley.

The Woman Who Married a Bear by John Straley