The Royal Wulff Murders

Starred review from December 19, 2011
A fisherman snags a body from a river, a sultry singer asks an artist to catch a fish her late father caught and marked, and feisty Montana sheriff Martha Ettinger refuses to take the easy way out in McCafferty’s thoroughly entertaining debut. Sean Stranahan, a recently transplanted Vermonter now living in Bridger, Mont., owns the art studio Blue Ribbon Watercolors, whose window sign includes the odd postscript “Private Investigations.” Velvet Lafayette is the lounge singer with the unusual and fishy request that hooks Stranahan. McCafferty blends plenty of fly-fishing lore (the Royal Wulff is a lure) with a host of intriguing characters, including fishing guide Rainbow Sam, Cottonwood Inn owner Doris Sizemore, and Blackfeet tracker Harold Little Feather. Only the sharp-eyed observation of the medical examiner suggests the body was a murder victim rather than an accidental drowning. The eventual identification of the victim helps link Stranahan’s task to that of the sheriff. The vivid Montana setting is a plus. Agent: Dominick Abel.

March 15, 2012
Field & Stream editor McCafferty's first novel is a fish story with a homicidal hook. Fresh from a wracking divorce, Sean Stranahan arrives in Bridger, Mont., unsettled and unhappy, a man without much purpose. He has only two serious interests: painting and fly-fishing. True, he once earned a living as a licensed private eye, but he never really took that seriously. Then along comes a southern songbird and natural heartbreaker calling herself Velvet Lafayette, and suddenly a susceptible Stranahan finds himself taking sleuthing very seriously indeed. Fetched out of Montana's trout-laden Madison River is a dead young man who proves to be the songbird's missing brother. A tragic accident? Hardly. Not with that Royal Wulff lure hooked so grotesquely in his mouth. Who put it there and why? That's what Vareda, her real name, hires Stranahan to discover. Since it's an election year, Sheriff Martha Ettinger takes a more than passing interest in these questions as well. But when murder follows murder, it becomes all too clear that someone ruthless is intent on keeping the answers secret. Having begun at cross-purposes, Martha and Sean now find themselves flirting with disaster. But their flirting with each other turns out to be beneficial for the investigation and fun for the reader. An entertaining debut, though less of the fishing stuff probably would have been more.

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February 1, 2012

It's all about the trout. When sultry singer Velvet Lafayette hires Montana PI Sean Stranahan to fish--and find the exact spot her late father went fly-fishing a year earlier--Sean wants to believe her. But the real story involves her brother's recent drowning death, deemed suspicious by local law enforcement. Sheriff Martha Ettinger fishes also, and she knows that a key clue is a particular type of fly, the Royal Wulff. The second clue is whirling disease, a parasitic malady that has decimated the local trout population. When Sam, a fishing guide, is shot, Sean knows the killer is panicking about possible witnesses. If Sean or Martha can figure out why fishing is bringing out the hunting instincts, they will be closing in on the perpetrator. VERDICT McCafferty's superb outdoor writing (not surprising for an editor at Field & Stream magazine) feels like an academic mystery thanks to a complex research topic that sometimes dilutes the mystery plot. Recommend this debut to lovers of environmentally themed mysteries by such authors as C.J. Box, but don't forget Victoria Houston's fly-fishing Wisconsin sheriff ("Loon Lake Fishing Mysteries"), if readers want to continue along that vein.

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