Cold Storage Alaska
John Straley, 2014
Soho Press
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616953065
Summary
An offbeat, often hilarious crime novel set in the sleepy Alaskan town of Cold Storage from the Shamus Award winning author of the Cecil Younger series.
Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you’re zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the town is withering.
Clive “The Milkman” McCahon returns to his tiny Alaska hometown after a seven-year jail stint for dealing coke. He has a lot to make up to his younger brother, Miles, who has dutifully been taking care of their ailing mother. But Clive doesn’t realize the trouble he’s bringing home. His vengeful old business partner is hot on his heels, a stick-in-the-mud State Trooper is dying to bust Clive for narcotics, and, to complicate everything, Clive might be going insane—lately, he’s been hearing animals talking to him.
Will his arrival in Cold Storage be a breath of fresh air for the sleepy, depopulated town? Or will Clive’s arrival turn the whole place upside down? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Redwood, California, USA
• Rasied—Seattle, Washington
• Education—B.A., University of Washington
• Awards—Shamus Award; Spotted Owl Award
• Currently—lives in Sitka, Alsaka
John Straley is a poet and author of detective fiction. He currently resides in Sitka, Alaska.
Born in Redwood City, California, Starley grew up in the Seattle, Washingon, area and attended high school in New York City. Straley trained, with encouragement from his parents, to be a horseshoer He attended Grinnell College before transferring to the University of Washington for a degree in writing.
After college and a stint in Eastern Washington, he followed his wife to Sitka, Alaska in 1977. After moving through a number of jobs he became a private investigator and, in 1985, a staff investigator for the Alaska Public Defender. As an investigator, he continued to write.
After being turned down by publishers numerous times, in 1991 he received a tip from friend and anthropologist Richard Nelson that New York City-based Soho Press was interested in detective fiction novels. Upon submitting his manuscript for The Woman Who Married a Bear, Soho Press expressed interest in his work. After a successful run of mysteries that has garnered critical acclaim, he is now looking outside of his trademark Cecil Younger series for future books.
In 2006, he was named writer laureate for the State of Alaska; he served in that position until 2008.
In 2008, Alaska Northwest Books published Straley's The Big Both Ways, a historical fiction work based in the Pacific Northwest. Since then his work has been primarily in creating poetry, except for his 2014 crime story, Cold Storage, Alaska.
Writing
Cecil Younger series
• 1992 - The Woman Who Married a Bear, Shamus Award
• 1993 - The Curious Eat Themselves
• 1996 - The Music of What Happens, Spotted Owl Award
• 1997 - Death and the Language of Happiness
• 1998 - The Angels Will not Care
• 2001 - Cold Water Burning
Later books
• 2008 - The Big Both Ways
• 2008 - The Rising and the Rain
• 2014 - Storage, Alaska
Short stories
• "Life Before the War" - published in Men from Boys
• "Finding Lou" - published in The Mysterious North
Essays
• Numerous essays, published in The Nation and Alaska magazine
• "Love, Crime and Joyriding on a Dead-End Road"—published in The Book of the Tongass (1999) (Author bio rom Wikipedia. Retrieved 3/26/2014.)
Book Reviews
Straley strikes the perfect balance of humor and pathos in this story about the McCahon brothers.
New York Times Book Review
[Straley] writes crime novels populated by perpetrators whose hearts are filled with more poetry than evil.
Wall Street Journal
An in-depth look at small-town life… If you think winter in St. Louis is uncomfortable, try winter in Cold Storage, Alaska.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Straley isn’t prolific, but when he does publish a book it’s a gem... The crime aspect of Cold Storage, Alaska is pretty casual. Straley’s mostly interested in his characters and how they interact on a personal level.... It’s always a pleasure to read Straley’s vivid studies of these folks—the slightly cracked, rugged and very funny characters of the Far North.
Seattle Times
[Cold Storage, Alaska] is part crime story, part screwball comedy, peopled with characters you long to spend more time with.
Daily Mail (UK)
Surprisingly moving.... Straley’s lean prose and snappy dialogue—not to mention the book’s few scenes of swift, hard-boiled violence—will likely remind many readers of Elmore Leonard’s classic crime novels.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Kind, smart and deeply moving… Cold Storage, Alaska is certainly a wild mystery in the vein of Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty years or all of Carl Hiaasen, it is just as much an homage to small towns and the people who fill them. What elevates Straley above so much of the competition is how very much he cares about the people and places he writes about.
Alaska Dispatch
Straley reveals his characters with unflinching pride and doesn’t mock or belittle their unique take on life… His description of the human condition as played out by his band of characters ranges from pathetic to amazingly humorous… A joy to read.
Durango Herald
[A]fter serving seven years of a 10-year sentence for drug dealing... [Clive McCahon's] problems are far from over. Aspiring Hollywood screenwriter Jake Shoemaker, his violent partner in crime, wants the large sum that Clive has squirreled away, and Jake won’t take no for an answer.... While there’s little actual mystery, most readers will enjoy spending time with the eccentric residents of Cold Storage.
Publishers Weekly
The nature of small-town life is perfectly rendered here, as are the wonders of coastal Alaska. Not quite as madcap as Carl Hiassen..., Straley's latest adventure in America's last frontier should appeal to those authors' fans as well as those who appreciate an unusual location and set of characters in their mysteries. —Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green
Library Journal
A story of a town with nothing much to offer but rain, salmon fishing, drink and gossip--but that's plenty for Straley to work with. Cold Storage may be "a town that gloried in [its] bad habits... clinging to the side of the mountains with no roads, no cars, and virtually no sense of the outer world," but in Straley's hands, it is rich in character, music, humor and compassion.
Shelf Awareness
Straley, author of The Big Both Ways, has created a wonderfully evocative place in Cold Storage. His evocation of nature and human nature approaches the lyrical, and he seems guided by Faulkner’s dictum that the only thing truly worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
Booklist
The cast of eccentric characters, the sharp, witty dialogue, and the chaotic, frenzied pace of the narrative would do Preston Sturges proud. Readers looking for edge-of-your-seat suspense should look elsewhere, but those who like their crime with a healthy side of humor could hardly do better. Quirky, funny and compulsively readable.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Straley is often identified as a crime novelist, but he is quick to self-identify as an “oddball” of the genre. Is Cold Storage, Alaska crime fiction? Why or why not?
2. While in prison, Clive finds religion, but also picks up the unusual ability to hear animals speak. Do you think Clive is actually able to communicate with animals or is it an expression of something else? How does your response and its counterpoint affect your reading of the book?
3. Straley is often praised for his ability to infuse a sense of place into his novels, especially when he writes about Alaska. Did his descriptions of Cold Storage and rural Alaska feel true? Was it the Alaska you expected?
4. The popular joke in the town about the doctor who offers to boil an egg for his soon-to-be-dead patient displays a certain fatalism, a key part of Cold Storage’s identity and a central theme in the novel. Where else is this acquiescence to fate or destiny on display in the book?
5. If Cold Storage, Alaska were made into a movie, who would you cast as Miles and Clive?
6. Miles and Clive both left town and returned for different reasons: Clive for his fresh start and Miles for a life of quiet, but of course, neither gets what they are looking for. Even so, do you think the brothers ever seem to settle on a notion of “home?”
7. Of small Alaskan villages and the alcoholism and isolation they often engender, Straley’s writes, “In any northern village there is a darkness lurking.” Is Cold Storage ultimately a place of darkness or light?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)