The shingle outside Sean Stranahan's studio in Bridger, Montana reads 'Blue Ribbon Watercolors (and Private Investigations)'. Stranahan's been in town for three months, transplanted from his native New England. After a sad divorce, Sean needed a change of scenery, and a cross-country drive landed him in Montana.
The Montana locale fills two needs for Sean: it has excellent fly-fishing, and it provides beautiful fishing landscapes for his paintings.
Stranahan was a licensed private investigator back East, but has no credentials in Montana, so his sleuthing work is informal. One day, like in a noir movie, a beautiful sexy chanteuse called Velvet Lafayette (nee Vareda Beaudreux) strolls into Sean's studio.
Southern Belle Velvet travels around the country singing in clubs, and she came to Montana for a specific purpose.
Velvet tells Stranahan a far-fetched story about finding a spot to scatter her father's ashes, but she really wants Sean to locate her missing brother, Jeffrey Beaudreux.
When Sean sees Velvet again, he mentions a newspaper story about a fishing guide called Rainbow Sam Meslik finding a body in the Madison River. The deceased is described as "an early-twenties white male, clean shaven, shoulder-length blond hair." Velvet says Jeffrey doesn't have blonde hair, so this can't be him, but of course it is.
Tragically, Jeffrey - who did grunt work in a trout hatchery - was murdered, and Velvet hires Stranahan to find out what happened. In the midst of this Sean and Velvet, both of whom have movie star good looks - become romantically involved. 💘
Jeffrey Beaudreux's homicide is investigated by Sheriff Martha Ettinger and her team.
This includes Martha's rough-around-the edges deputy Walt Hess;
and Native American tracker Harold Little Feather.
At first Ettinger resents Stranahan butting in, but Sean demonstrates his gumshoe skills, and Ettinger lets him help.
The plot of Royal Wulff Murders revolves around the real-life issue of whirling disease, which is defined as "a disease of juvenile trout and salmon caused by a parasitic protozoan, affecting the balance of the fish and causing it to swim with a whirling motion."
Juvenile trout with whirling disease
I'm going to include an aside here, which you can skip if you like.
In an interview, author Keith McCafferty - who's the Survival and Outdoor Skills Editor of Field & Stream - observes: 'When I moved to Montana, the upper Madison River was one of the world’s greatest trout streams.
Then whirling disease struck and the roof collapsed on the fishery, the trout population plunging from 3,300 per mile in the late 1980s to 300 per mile only a few years later, a decline of ninety percent.
I remember thinking then that this could be an interesting plot line in a novel, for trout fishing in Montana is a $500 million industry, and by some estimates as much as half of that was generated in the Madison Valley. By the time I got around to writing the book, the rainbow trout population had rebounded to about sixty percent of its former population. Leading experts on whirling disease believe that the trout population has been artificially boosted by the introduction of trout from nearby Willow Creek and Willow Creek Reservoir.'
Getting back to the novel:
Sheriff Ettinger and her squad learn that the victim, Jeffrey Beaudreux, saw some shady activity at his hatchery job, which may have led to his death. The homicide investigation gets dangerous, as evidenced by shootings, an abduction, and an attempted murder.
In the end, the killer and the motive are uncovered, and the outcome is satisfying and believable. Moreover, Sean has been commissioned to paint twelve watercolors, for $2,000 each, so he's riding high.
In the course of the story, Sean and his friend Rainbow Sam - the fishing guide with a locker room mouth - do a lot of fly-fishing, and the novel has many of depictions of the sport.
There are also descriptions of fishing flies and how to make them.
Making a fishing fly
Fishing Flies
Box of fishing flies
My only experience with fly-fishing is a few scenes in movies, but I found the fly-fishing chitchat interesting, and I didn't mind it at all.
This is the debut novel in the 'Sean Stranahan' series, which contains eight books (so far). I liked the book, and plan to read more. I'd recommend the novel to fans of thrillers.
No comments:
Post a Comment