The Music of What Happens (1996)

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0553572059, Mass Market Paperback)

"I never find the smoking gun or the lead pipe with the bloody fingerprints on it, because everyone is looking for those. I find everything else, everything that has been left in the overturned rooms: the surface that wasn't blood-spattered, the dust on the knickknacks and family photo albums, but not on the exceptionally clean retirement plaque; the music on the radio in the empty hallway after everyone has been taken to jail or the morgue. I do this because there is always trace evidence of innocence, and innocence is largely overlooked, even by a man oiling a gun with a child crying in the background on the day before a killing." That voice is so original it can only belong to Straley, who introduced us to Alaskan investigator Cecil Younger in The Woman Who Married a Bear and The Curious Eat Themselves. This time out, Younger is trying to help the sister of an old girlfriend keep custody of her little boy. The wealthy, powerful family she has married into says she's unstable, an unsuitable mother -- but their opposition has sinister roots.