Cold Storage, Alaska Paperback - 2015

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE
 
            Annabelle had put the tea kettle on just moments ago. Now it was whistling, yet she didn’t get up to attend to it. Recently the past had become a hallucination that seemed to be intruding into the present moment, so she wasn’t certain what really needed doing.
            She had been thinking about Franklin Roosevelt: the grinning man with the cigarette holder, who was never photographed in his frailty. But now it was early spring in the last year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and all the news was about the President’s failings. Flawed men kept ruling the world and the radio in the corner with the long antennae squealed on and on about it. Not that the news mattered much to Annabelle now. It was raining hard and all of the events of her life—past, present, and possibly the future—were taking on the quality of a slightly malevolent screwball comedy.
            She sat in her chair looking out the window. She had been distracted by so many things lately, presidents, family members, and lost animals all swirling around her. The glass on the door rattled, and she looked up expecting to see her uncle, Slippery Wilson, walk in slapping his wet leather gloves against his pants, even though Slippery Wilson had been dead for more than three decades. She found herself listening for crying from the crib, even though both her boys were grown men. The older one, Miles, was down at the Senior Center cooking dinner, and Clive was getting out of prison.
            “Never matter,” Annabelle said aloud to herself. She got up and turned off the radio in the corner.
            Periodically during the afternoon she had been trying to remember the joke she had heard the day before, and she tried again now. It was good, she remembered, and she thought that it would have been good to tell Miles. But the joke, like most of the details of the New Deal, eluded her in its detail.
            Out her window the hillside fell away to the inlet. Alder trees grew quickly on the disturbed ground where the boys had built her house. A gust of wind came, and she thought she saw some darting color. A flash of yellow—she couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like a match head exploding. Yellow with red sparks flaring in the trees. She slid her glasses up her nose and was almost certain that she saw the bird fluttering up and away.
            “Buddy?” she said aloud, as the kettle boiled over and doused the flame.
 
            On the day he was released from prison, Clive Cahon was thinking about his plan to get home. He had called ahead to order a cab. He didn’t know why he gave the cab company a false name; it was simply the first name that popped into his head and had nothing at all to do with the plan.
            He had hated living in Alaska as a kid. His father had assumed he would become a fisherman. His mother had assumed that no matter how he made his living, it would be made right there in Cold Storage. Only his grandma Ellie had told him not to listen and to dream his own dreams. Having grown up on an island on the north Pacific Clive had longed for the great American Highway. He dreamed of cars and deserts, and long straight roads. Ellie had always given him books about cars, for every birthday and Christmas; cars and guitars, bands he heard on the radio and beautiful girls who didn’t know everything about him. Ellie had understood his itch to move on. Only she seemed to understand that living in Cold Storage, Alaska, was like being born into a small maze, where everyone constantly bumped into one another. As soon as his father died in the Thanksgiving Day storm, Clive had left. He had flown north to Hanes, bought a car, without ever owning a license, without ever learning to drive, and he took off. He was fifteen. Ellie’s ashes had been scattered at sea and his father’s body had never been found, so he didn’t consider that he had anything holding him to his cloistered island town.
            Clive was thirty-five now. It was early April, and the clouds were clearing away after a morning rain. The air was so clean it almost burned his lungs. Clive had served seven out of his ten-year sentence in McNeill Island Penitentiary, and he was wearing his old court clothes: a dark blue suit his mother had bought him, now far too tight in his shoulders and upper arms. Feeling the sun cut through the trees, he set his cardboard box on the ground, slipped off the coat, folded it neatly, and set it on top of the box.
            There were only a few people getting off the prison boat, mostly staff members carrying lunch boxes and rain gear. There was one other inmate, a skinny white kid with red hair who walked down the dock to meet an old man waiting beside a sputtering Ford LTD. The convict approached, the man opened the passenger side door and a woman in a blue house dress got out and threw her arms around the boy before he could set his gear down on the ground. She cried and snuffled into his neck, while the old man rubbed the back of his shoulders.
            Clive shifted from one foot to another, waiting for his ride. A yellow minivan finally rolled up.
            “You Stilton Cheesewright?”            
            Clive was still watching the kid being greeted by the old couple. He wondered if he had seen the kid inside, but didn’t recognize him. He hadn’t recognize the false name the cabby was saying, either.
            “You’re Stilton Cheesewright, yeah?” the driver said again. He reached behind and opened the back door of the van.
            “Absolutely.” Clive set his box of personal effects in the back seat, slammed the door, and walked around to sit in the front passenger seat.
            “You want to go to a grocery store?” He squinted at his run sheet.
            “That’s right,” Clive said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
            “No problem, Mr. Cheesewright. Would you like me to wait while you shop?”
            “Naw . . . just drop me. I might be a while,” Clive said but then added: “You know a place with really fresh lettuce?”
            The driver smiled. “I think if you want the really fresh stuff you should go over to the Farmfresh store down Sixth. It’s good, you know. They really do buy it from the farmers and everything. It’s a couple of miles out of town, but it’s worth it.”
            “Perfect,” said Clive. The driver punched the meter and wheeled to his left, down the road away from the prison.
            Clive leaned back to watch the fence posts stutter by. He watched the sunlight filter through the evergreen trees and he watched a cow eating in a green field, a rusty bell hung from her neck. She lifted her head as the cab sped past and Clive could imagine the soft clonking of her bell wandering through the air. Clive asked to stop for a moment; the driver put on the turn signal and eased the van to the gravelly edge of the road. Clive thanked him, leaned back in the cab’s mildewed seat, and smiled. He sat that way for a few moments, smiling and listening for the cow’s bell.
            “You do a long stretch?” the driver asked.
            Clive nodded, his eyes closed. “Yes,” he said. “It’s time to go home, I guess.”
            “You want me to get going?” the driver asked.
            Clive nodded again, his eyes still closed.
            “Let’s go get you some lettuce then,” the driver said and pulled the blinker all the way down, rolling the cab back onto the road.
 
            Clive was both happy and nervous. He had looked forward to this day with an urgency that few people who haven’t been in prison could know. But just as it was happening he felt a kind of raw anxiety. He could not go back to crime, and although he had scrubbed his mind clean he knew that in this world of free men he understood little else besides crime. Crime was now, in his new state of mind, too chaotic.
 
            McNeill was an old federal prison that had been remodeled as a medium security jail when it was turned over to the State of Washington. The Birdman of Alcatraz had actually done most of his time at McNeill. The main building had the original feel of the place: thick iron doors, WPA style murals on the walls of the mess hall. It could have been a large public library in some small Midwestern town if it weren’t for all the sex offenders.
 
He had seen arterial blood spurting and painting the shower floor red. He had seen the
black holes that hand made knives leave in young white skin. He had heard all the swearing that there was on the world and the blubbery threats made through spit stuffed lips. All he had wanted now was peace. No grittiness. He was done with it. He would always be a sinner, he knew that, but he could at least try not to sin as much. He had thought that even if he could cut back on his sinning by ten percent, that would still leave him plenty of room, while giving him a shot at some minor redemption at least.

Media reviews

Praise for Cold Storage, Alaska

"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."
—The Wall Street Journal

"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."
—The Seattle Times

“Thoroughly enjoyable and slightly wacko... Dashes of magical realism mixed with ironic humor reminiscent of the Coen brothers and violence worthy of Quentin Tarantino make this second series novel a winner. Compelling characters and deft treatment of themes like redemption and the power of community take it to a level beyond.”
—The Boston Globe

"[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
 
“Lesser writers look to their characters’ poor choices and attempts to rectify them, John Straley loves his characters for just those choices. Hölderlin wrote: 'Poetically man dwells on the earth.' Some of us wind up in limericks, some in heroic couplets. But damned near every one of us, sooner or later, ends up in one of Straley’s wise, wayward, wonderfully unhinged novels.”
—James Sallis, author of Drive and the Lew Griffin mysteries

“John Straley’s Cold Storage, Alaska is a snapshot of the USA, with its faults and struggling possibilities. Comic, engrossing, exotic yet familiar, it’s precise to the place and its feel, keen on character and foible, full of lore and history, and rich in little off-to the-side sightings of trees, winds, waves, birds and mammals… Over the top good.”
—Gary Snyder, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Turtle Island

“Speaking of literary miracles, read John Straley's new novel ‘Cold Storage, Alaska.’ It is so good. A comedy, a love story, a true-to-life small-town Alaska tale, plus there's a great dog in it. I loved it. I wish I wrote that book.”
—Heather Lende, author of Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs and If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name

“What a warm, engaging, profoundly human book this is: its skin crackling, its heart enormous and open. It's a mystery with judicious blasts of violence and dread, but it opens also onto the bigger mysteries—of community, of family, of place. The several lives that intertwine throughout the story reach moments of quiet grace that resonate stealthily but deeply.”
—John Darnielle, The Mountain Goats

“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, Starred Review

"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, Starred Review

 “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

“The cast of eccentric characters, the sharp, witty dialogue, and the chaotic, frenzied pace of the narrative would do Preston Sturges proud… Those who like their crime with a healthy side of humor could hardly do better... Quirky, funny and compulsively readable.”
—Kirkus

“Like the Coen brothers on literary speed, John Straley is among the very best stylists of his generation. Cold Storage, Alaska is truly stunning, poetic, and smart.”
—Ken Bruen, Shamus Award winning author of The Guard

“The nature of small-town life is perfectly rendered here, as are the wonders of coastal Alaska... [For] those who appreciate an unusual location and set of characters in their mysteries.”
—Library Journal

“Don't think Westlake for this caper crime novel, though; think Clyde Edgerton maybe, or a tender, kinder version of Janet Evanovich … What makes Straley (a criminal investigator in the ‘real’ Alaska) and his books stand out is the way his characters treat each other: with a reliable sense of love and awe... [A] wacky and enjoyable romp.”
—Beth Kannell, Kingdom Books, Waterford, VT

“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.”
—The Durango Herald

“Cold Storage, Alaska is by turns funny, serious, frightening, philosophical, exaggerated... and intimate. It is filled with odd situations and the kind of offbeat characters that keep your attention glued to the page... [A] very special read.” 
—Kittling Books

“Straley gives us an Alaskan town frozen in time and in its ways; and then, by masterful degrees, he shows us its vibrant, violent thaw.”
—Sam Alden, author of It Never Happened Again

“Readers will enjoy spending time with the eccentric residents of Cold Storage.” —Publishers Weekly

"Poetic...like so many exceptional works in this genre, Cold Storage, Alaska shows that extreme circumstances can occasionally force people to be stronger and more resilient than they thought possible. Straley accomplishes all of this with a bare minimum of violence and not a serial killer in sight.”
—Kirkus Reviews Blog

“[A] delightful, fast-moving novel packed with colorful misfit characters… Straley's talented prose leaves the reader with a smile on his face, eagerly awaiting the next installment in this series.”
—Nancy Simpson-Brice, Book Vault, Oskaloosa, IA

“[Cold Storage, Alaska] has the tone of an ensemble comedy… A marriage of ‘Northern Exposure’ with ‘Waking Ned Devine.’”
—Anchorage Daily News

“Quirky the people of Straley's Cold Storage may occasionally be, but they are never less than real, with their struggles, their dreams, their failures and modest successes, and their binding sense of community that lightly overlays their fierce if sometimes false self-reliance… A gem of story, marvelously told, that repays the reader many times over for the reading.”
—The Drowning Machine

“A loving, evocative portrait of an Alaskan community full of characters whose various schemes and dreams provide plenty of forward momentum.”
—Reviewing the Evidence

“Speaking of literary miracles, read John Straley's new novel ‘Cold Storage, Alaska.’ It is so good. A comedy, a love story, a true-to-life small-town Alaska tale, plus there's a great dog in it. I loved it. I wish I wrote that book.”
—Heather Lende, author of Take Good Care of the Garden and The Dogs and If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name

“If the frigidity and minimalism of Scandinavian noir has worn you down a little, grab Cold Storage, Alaska for a lighter look at life and crime in a cold place. You may end up wanting to go there.”
—Crime Fiction Lover

Praise for John Straley

“Chandler, Ross Macdonald, James Crumley... Straley proves once again that he is up there with the great ones.”
—Chicago Tribune

“Now and then a writer dares to flout the rules and in so doing, carves out a niche that belongs to him alone. John Straley's novels are like no others.”
—San Diego Tribune

“Like James Lee Burke, Straley transcends the genre.... Marvelous.”
—The Tampa Tribune and Times






From the Hardcover edition.