I've never had a burning desire to go to Alaska. If someone administered a word-association test to me and said the word "Alaska," my immediate response would be "cold." I get enough of that living in Ohio. My wife has been there and keeps talking about how beautiful it looks from a cruise ship. Sorry. I've been getting a little nudge at the edge of my brain, however, a little itch that says "Hmmm." What put it there is a short but intense novel by John Straley entitled COLD WATER BURNING.

Straley is well-regarded in mystery circles, which makes it hard for me to confess that I was unfamiliar with him before reading COLD WATER BURNING. This is Straley's sixth novel featuring Cecil Younger, a down-at-the-heels private investigator in the trapper and tourist town of Sitka, Alaska. Younger has been evolving over the course of the past six years or so, and COLD WATER BURNING finds him living with his girlfriend Jane Marie, her infant daughter, and his not-quite-autistic friend Todd. He is also maintaining sobriety after years of alcohol abuse and trying to eke out an existence in a setting where such a task is by no means easy, particularly for a private investigator who, by his own admission, is not a very good one. He is, however, good enough.

In COLD WATER BURNING Younger finds himself haunted by the circumstances of a grisly case he was involved with several years previously. Younger had been part of a legal team defending Richard Ewers, a deckhand accused of murdering four people aboard the scow Mygirl and setting it ablaze. Ewers was found not guilty of the murders, due in no small part to Younger's efforts, but the cloud of suspicion has continued to hang over him. Now Ewers has disappeared, and his wife believes someone has taken revenge. Younger is initially reluctant to become involved. However, when Ewers is killed in a police shootout, and two other people involved in the case die in separate incidents, it appears that someone is taking dramatic steps to either bring rough justice to the matter or to conceal the truth behind the unsolved Mygirl murder case --- or, perhaps, to do both.

Younger, due to his prior involvement in the matter, finds himself drawn into the circumstances in spite of himself. In doing so, he finds that he has put not only himself, but those he loves, in mortal danger. He also finds himself slowly reaching the conclusion that a lifelong friend, a person whom he has always trusted, may have betrayed that trust. It is soon clear that no matter how the case is resolved, Younger's view of his world --- and the people in it --- will be changed forever.

Straley, himself a resident of Sitka, is an absolute master at weaving his surroundings into the fabric of this masterfully told and compelling story. Younger is real; he is still dealing with the consequences of addiction and the circumstances of his past, and if he doesn't always do so well, it makes his story all the more true-to-life. Straley also gives his readers little bits and pieces of the sociology and uniqueness of Alaska, a state most Americans know only by repute.

Again, I have read only one of the Younger novels. But I was reminded repeatedly of Ross MacDonald's Archer novels. This is not to say that Straley copies MacDonald's style --- Straley's voice is uniquely his own --- but rather that he captures, as does MacDonald, a unique place and time within the context of an intriguing story as seen through the eyes of a complex character.