Cecil Younger, the protagonist of John Straley's series of mysteries set in Sitka, Alaska, isn't exactly a slacker, but as PIs go, he doesn't invest his job with a great deal of energy or effort. In Cold Water Burning, his sixth outing, Cecil stumbles with characteristic good nature through his assignment: to find a missing man he himself helped acquit of burning a boat and killing its occupants. The man's vanished, along with $50,000 a tabloid advanced him for his version of how the crime really went down.

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