Welcome to Week CXLIX of ‘Fishing Parkland Shorelines’. Like most of us I am a novice fisherman, loving to fish, but far from an expert. In the following weeks I’ll attempt to give those anglers who love to fish but just don’t have access to a boat, a look at some of the options in the Yorkton area where you can fish from shore, and hopefully catch some fish.
So you are a loyal reader of this weekly excursion into all things fishing, and you have come to recognize I like to read about the activity nearly as much as I like to actually do it.
While there are a range of books on fishing, the rather small niche of ‘fishing mysteries’ are among my favourites. I suppose that has as much to do with my liking mysteries; from Sherlock Holmes to Batman and many in between, as it does with the underlying element of fishing.
In this case I actually mentioned Holmes because the author of Dead Man’s Fancy, Keith McCafferty is a fan of the gamed British sleuth as well. It is kind of cool knowing as I writer I hold something in common with another writer whom I admire.
McCafferty said he has always been a reader, something he feels is a prerequisite to being a writer.
“I think most people who become writers really like to read,” he said.
McCafferty grabbed my attention a few years back when I read his first fiction novel The Royal Wulff Murders. The book, which draws its name from a trout fly pattern which figures into the mystery’s storyline introduced part-time river guide, part-time nature painter, and part-tome sleuth Sean Stranahan.
Set in the heart of Montana where trout fishing meets cattleman, meets rich newcomers, the book rocketed to the top tier in terms of fishing mysteries, at least in my mind, and I have read a few different authors now.
My interest in McCafferty as a writer, and Stranahan as a character only grew with the second book The Gray Ghost Murders released in 2013.
Dead Man’s Fancy hit in 2014, and it is a great read.
Let’s start with a taste from the inside cover;
“Wolves howl as a lone horse returns at sunset to the Culpepper Dude Ranch in the Madison Valley. The missing rider is Nanika Martinelli, a beautiful redheaded river guide – better known as the “Fly-fishing Venus” because she lures clients like dry flies draw trout.
“As Sheriff Martha Ettinger backtracks hoof prints in the snow, she finds one of the men who has fallen under Nanika’s spell impaled on the antler tine of a giant bull elk, its remains claimed by a wolf pack. But was this an accident, a man tripping and falling to his death? If not, is the killer human or animal, and has it claimed Nanika as well? With the help of Sean Stranahan – painter, fly fisherman, and sometimes private detective – Ettinger’s investigation leads to a radical animal rights group called the Clan of the Three-Clawed Wolf and their Svengali master, a proclaimed alpha male whose eyes blaze with pagan fire.
“As nights grow cold and blood seeps deep into the snows of the Montana mountains, Stranahan and Ettinger find themselves in their most dangerous adventure yet – caught in the crossfire of wolf lovers, wolf haters, and a sister bent on revenge.”
As you might gather Ettinger is a regular character in the books. While the focus is on Stranahan, there are a cast of characters which flesh out McCafferty’s book in what read like a realistic mix of people in an area where many different types of people come together.
“I wanted to write about how the west was changing,” he said, he said, adding with the changes come unusual relationships. There are millionaires becoming friends with neighbours “who don’t have enough gas to drive 30-miles to go hunting, or fishing.”
After reading Dead Man’s Fancy I actually had a chance to interview McCafferty, and he said that is one of the unique things about the Montana of the day, the diversity of people, from the rich building summer homes on the rivers, to families who trace their roots back to the earliest days of the state. And within that are the very rich, and very poor living on the same road. He said around one corner can be an old trailer where drug dealers are cooking up a batch, and down the road a movie star’s mansion.
It is a place where characters exist if the writer merely watches those going by.
But before I get too far into the book, I should point out the author knows fishing, so where that element of the books is concerned, they ring true.
McCafferty “is the award winning survival and outdoor skills editor of Field & Stream … A two-time National Magazine Awards finalist, he has written articles for Fly Fisherman Magazine, Mother Earth News, and The Chicago Tribune. He lives with his wife in Bozeman, Montana.
“I always wanted to write for Field & Steam,” he said.
When it comes to his mysteries, McCafferty says he starts with the germ of an idea, and goes from there.
“As a writer I’m what you call a muddler througher as opposed to an outliner,” he wrote in his online blog. “I start with a scene, I write the first line, the second is born of the first, and so the story develops. It’s like setting sail, you can see to the horizon, then you’re lost at sea. Finally you smell land, and you exhale the breath you didn’t know you’d been holding the past few months when your inclination had been to jump overboard into the teeth of the sharks. As a way of writing a plot driven novel, this is not a method I recommend, but it seems to be the only way I can work …
“I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, that writing a novel is like setting sail for a distant land. You can see as far as the horizon, and that will get you a few chapters in, and at a certain point you’ll smell land or a shorebird will perch on your mast, and you’ll be able to see the end and work toward it with a sense of excitement — say over the novel’s last four chapters. It’s those 250 or so pages in between when you’re lost at sea, sharks circling, and no stars to take a bearing, that separate those who wish to write novels from those who actually do.”
As I am writing this I was trying to determine of Dead Man’s Fancy was the best Stranahan book so far? I know I enjoyed all three, but the wolf clan theme was maybe the most intriguing plot, although I was left wishing we had been given a glimpse of what drew the ‘bad guy’ to wolves. It was a change to look into a unique psyche which was a bit under done in my mind.
Still there was a twist in the tale I had not expected, and an ending less black and white than might have been anticipated, which I liked a lot since real life is more of a world of gray.
The key to the stories are the characters, Stranahan to be sure, but Ettinger and others as well. That is by design McCafferty said.
“I’ve always been drawn to exciting characters,” he said pointing to the likes of Holmes and Dr. Watson. He said people remember characters, especially in a book series, not the plots of a specific book. The plot holds the reader’s interest as they turn the pages, but the characters hold a place in memory.
In the case of Stranahan and company they are welcome memories which will draw me to what might lie ahead for them.
And, the best news is that more Stranahan books are on the way.
Crazy Mountain Kiss is nearing its 2015 launch day.
“It’s April, but there’s still snow on the Montana mountains the day a member of the Madison River Liar and Fly Tiers club finds a Santa hat in the chimney of his rented cabin. With the flue clogged and desperate to make a fire, he climbs up to the roof, only to find the body of a teenage girl wedged into the chimney. When Sheriff Martha Ettinger and her team arrive to extract the body they identify the victim as Cinderella “Cindy” Huntingdon, a promising young rodeo star, missing since November,” notes Goodreads.com on the next book in the series.
As a fan I am already excited about Crazy Mountain Kiss.
But, the better news is that while interviewing McCafferty he mentioned he is already at work on book five, and has a contract signed which will see at least a sixth book to come.
Given the author’s track record of a book a year, that means Stranahan mysteries to relish on days you can’t fish through until 2016 at least.
You can keep up with the progress of the books at www.keithmccafferty.com where McCafferty also hosts ‘The Deadwater Blog’.
