Obtain The Curious Eat Themselves (Cecil Younger, #2) Published By John Straley Accessible In Publication

the John Straley novels I've read so far, I think this one is the bestthough not my favorite, But the construction was really well done, the mystery took some exciting and unexpected turns, and the characters felt much more personable and fleshedout than before, It's a good progression all around, which makes me optimistic for the next book and the rest of the series, for sure,

Still, this and the other books aren't super great with handling women especially victims of rape, neurodivergent people, or people of color, A woman is referred to as "a negress" pretty early on in the story, and it left me bracing myself through the rest of the novel, waiting for another microaggressive shoe to dropit didn't, and I didn't think there was anything much worse than that but also there were no other explicit Black people in the story, so ツ/.
Which, ultimately, I think is my issue here there isn't anything particularly offensive or horrendously demeaning, but the terminology seems super dated, And hey, maybe that's just trying to be authentic to the setting, as they're set sometime in what I think is the's I dunno, it's just very confusing to see this wording used when the narrative itself seems pretty strongly opposed to the sort of meaning behind them and the impact they cause.
There's so much tenderness and compassion in describing, say, Toddy, and especially his relationship with Cecil and the way Cecil gets it wrong sometimes but tries very hard to get it right most of the time is one of my favorite things about his character but then someone goes and uses the rslur or something and it's just bewildering enough to throw me out of the story and, again, leave me bracing for some kind of terrible impact.


Anyway, I'm gonna be pretty careful about recommending these books to people, but I'm still going to keep reading them, because the mysteries have so far been really interesting and kinda fun, and because I just really dig Straley's writing.
His prose has this really sparse, almost bleak thing going for it, but that's interspersed with these really gorgeous, almostlyrical descriptions of people and landscape, and the juxtaposition really does it for me.
The naysayers here are missing the point, This is not a garden variety police procedural although there's that here, too but a literary novel, using the genre as a starting point, Think James Crumley transplanted to Alaska, not Montana, with the added advantage of an intriguing and complex cast of characters dealing with the complex fate of trying to be good, and survive as well, in what may be the last vestige of the wild, wild West.
Cecil Younger is back for his second adventure, But this time there is just too much going on,

Younger was hired by a young woman to investigate her rape at a mining camp, But before he can do anything, she is murdered,

The victim was close to Hannah, the woman who used to love Cecil, So he begins to look into the case,

But while the first book in the series was full of wellwritten descriptions of Alaska and its people, this time there are so many subplots and so much time spent in airplanes that there just isn't enough of what made the first book so good.


I'm eager to see if the series returns to its roots in book three, One theme of my reading is to learn more about the nature of the places I travel by reading crime or mystery novels that are based in these locations.
I have previously learned much about Southern California and the Florida gulf from reading T, Jefferson Parker and Randy Wayne White, What these author write about the seedy underside of life and cultural history of the area never shows up in tourist guides,

So that is what drew me to this book, It begins with the discovery of the body of a young murdered woman under a bridge in Ketchikan, Alaska, a place I visited a few years ago with friends.
I have art work in our living room depicting exactly this place, I bought the book along with the art work, put it away when I returned, and forgot about it until recently, It was a very good read and it revealed so much about Alaskan culture that I saw only on the surface in my visit and previous reading, I'm going to pass it along to the others I traveled there with, and hope they enjoy it as much as I did, The friend who recommended this novel to me said they had mixed feelings about it, and now I understand why, The Curious Eat Themselves is a wonderfully titled noirish murder mystery set ins Alaska and starring a frankly slapdash Defense Investigator do these exist in the UK called Cecil Younger.
I think lists might help to explain my feelings about it,

The Good
A really strong sense of place, Alaska and its residents seem pretty messed up, but Straley evokes them very vividly, The details all add up: use of light planes to get around everywhere, absence of entertainment that isnt food or alcohol, trees everywhere, You can really feel the cold emptiness and inhospitable climate, Theres a visceral sense that this place is hostile to human life and a minor mistake could kill you,
Some interesting character dynamics, especially Cecil and his housemate Todd, The narrator is most appealing when hes chatting with friends about topics unrelated to the murder, Most of the background characters are intriguingly idiosyncratic,
There are flashes of excellent deadpan humour,
A convincing depiction of the amoral profitseeking of oil companies,

The Bad
I liked basically nothing about the central mystery, A woman has been raped and, after trying to get justice, murdered, By different men, as it turns out, The rape happens under repugnant circumstances while she was working at a oil compound or whatever you call an onshore oil rig, During the investigation, various men suggest that she acted flirtatious, was a tease,

and otherwise try to excuse her rape, Then, we learn that her throat was slit by another guy, who she trusted and even loved, And he did it just because he felt like it! This motivation, “I was in a murdering mood,” is distasteful and flimsy, I dont understand why Cecil accepted it, The additional murder of the pilot merely added to the sense that Alaska is a land of terrible decisions why would a corporate employee default straight to murder without even trying to intimidate or buy the pilot off And then let Cecil onto the plane carrying the corpse
Noone in this book is any good at their job.
Cecil is reactive, spends most of the time running away, and doesnt actually solve the mystery: its explained to him.
The police officer, Doggy, is even more inept, I got the impression that Alaska is a place where you can easily get away with very serious crimes, Perhaps that was the point The oil companies seem disorganised and inclined to hire murderhappy loose cannons, which doesn't seem great for shareholder returns,
The treatment of women was pretty troubling, The main female character is a naked corpse, While Hannah took a lot more initiative than Cecil, there was no obvious reason for the scene where she bangs him, No other female characters gets any pagetime to speak of, The rape investigation is not handled well by anyone,
The dog dies!

The Ambivalent
I liked that Cecil didnt carry a gun, then was disappointed when he uses someone elses later on.

The detailed descriptions of skinning and gutting animals werent very pleasant for a vegetarian, I couldnt decide whether they really served a narrative purpose,
The ubiquity of alcoholism was depressing and at times reminded me of sitelinkDavid Foster Wallace,

On balance this novel was well worth reading, though, as my previous knowledge of Alaska was entirely gleaned from The Simpsons Movie, None of that conflicts with The Curious Eat Themselves, although the novel manages much greater depth, I appreciated the insight into a strange and seedy corner of the world, and some of the deadpan narration, without liking the events that transpired, .