Dead Man's Fancy: A Sean Stranahan Mystery (Sean Stranahan Mysteries)
When a beautiful, flame-haired fishing guide goes missing from a dude ranch, and one of the searchers is found impaled on the sword point of a dead elk’s antlers, Sheriff Martha Ettinger turns to Sean Stranahan, the fishing, painting PI, for help. The missing woman, locally famous as the Fly Fishing Venus, has a complicated history that involves both an eerily charismatic biker and the save-the-wolf movement—and, when her sister arrives from Canada and wants to hire Sean privately, things only get more complicated. The third Stranahan novel (following The Gray Ghost Murders, 2013) delivers a carefully plotted western procedural with interesting characters and relationships; a strong sense of its Madison Valley, Montana, setting; and plenty of fly fishing for readers who like to wet a line. Like C. J. Box’s early Joe Pickett novels, it takes an evenhanded look at a controversial contemporary western issue—in this case, wolf reintroduction. Good reading for fans of Box, Craig Johnson, Nevada Barr, and Paul Doiron, although McCafferty has his own distinctive voice. --Keir Graff