So Far and Good

Shamus Award winner Straley’s gripping eighth Cecil Younger investigation finds the Sitka, Alaska, PI doing prison time for the desperate measures he took to save the life of his teenage daughter, Blossom, in 2018’s Baby’s First Felony. Blossom, meanwhile, seeks his advice on how to help her friend Georgianna “George” Paul. A DNA test George has taken indicates that her parents, Ida and Richard Paul, aren’t her biological parents, and she’s in fact the victim of a notorious kidnapping years earlier of a native infant. After Ida and Richard are arrested, efforts are made to reunite George with her birth parents, but something isn’t quite right with her new family. Ida’s subsequent prison suicide may have been something more sinister, and there’s a growing sense that the original kidnapping might not have been all that it seemed. Events take a deadly turn when Blossom disappears while trying to help George, forcing Cecil to make use of his new prison connections and, once again, take desperate measures on his own. Memorable characters match the vividly realized Alaskan settings. Readers will eagerly await the next installment. Agent: Kerry D’Agostino, Curtis Brown. (Dec.)