"I should have known that a woman doesn't pay you to go fishing without there being some kind of catch." This wisdom comes too late to save Sean Stranahan from the snares of a southern belle searching for her missing brother, but Keith McCafferty hits a bull's eye with Sean's story in his debut novel, The Royal Wulff Murders. A newly divorced transplant from New England in the throes of a precocious mid-life crisis, Stranahan moved to Montana to fish, paint and be a (preferably) retired private investigator. But when honey-tongued Velvet LaFayette offers him cash to locate her father's old fishing hole, he swallows her story hook, line and sinker--only to uncover a twisted plot of tainted trout and multiple murders most foul.
Bizarre occupational pairings for fictional sleuths are beyond passé as a way for new writers in the genre to make their niche, but--like bacon and brownies--Stranahan's odd mix of painter, P.I. and fly fisher works. It helps that McCafferty, an editor at Field & Stream, really knows his trout, and life in Bozeman has obviously acquainted him with the ways of Montana. He writes with both a love of nature and an obsession for detail common in the outdoorsman. Add the backwoodsy feminism of Sheriff Martha Ettinger, and the mystery is a good fit for enthusiasts of Nevada Barr who have read through all the Anna Pigeon novels. Packed with wilderness action and starring a band of stalwart individualists, The Royal Wulff Murders will have readers begging McCafferty for more. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher