Cold Hearted River

Description

In the sixth novel in the acclaimed Sean Stranahan mystery series, Montana’s favorite detective finds himself on the trail of Ernest Hemingway’s missing steamer trunk. 

“Keith McCafferty is a top-notch, first-rate, can’t-miss novelist.”
—C.J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author 

When a woman goes missing in a spring snowstorm and is found dead in a bear’s den, Sheriff Martha Ettinger reunites with her once-again lover Sean Stranahan to investigate. In a pannier of the dead woman’s horse, they find a wallet of old trout flies, the leather engraved with the initials EH. Only a few days before, Patrick Willoughby, the president of the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club, had been approached by a man selling fishing gear that he claimed once belonged to Ernest Hemingway. A coincidence? Sean doesn’t think so, and he soon finds himself on the trail of a stolen trunk rumored to contain not only the famous writer’s valuable fly fishing gear but priceless pages of unpublished work.

The investigation will take Sean through extraordinary chapters in Hemingway’s life. Inspired by a true story, Cold Hearted River is a thrilling adventure, moving from Montana to Michigan, where a woman grapples with the secrets in her heart, to a cabin in Wyoming under the Froze To Death Plateau, and finally to the ruins in Havana, where an old man struggles to complete his life’s mission one true sentence at a time.“The sixth novel in author Keith McCafferty’s outstanding Sean Stranahan Mystery Series, Cold Hearted River is another compelling read from beginning to end that will prove be an enduringly popular addition to any community library Mystery/Suspense collections. A ‘must’ for the personal reading lists of dedicated mystery buffs in general, and Keith McCafferty fans in particular.”—Midwest Book Review.com

“Set along our own Madison River, images of fingers floating in tequila jars and cowboys surviving the cold in horse carcasses will fill the silence of your fishing meditation for weeks.”—Outside Bozeman

“When a book begins with a harrowing struggle for survival in the Montana mountains and uses as its MacGuffin a lost trunk of Ernest Hemingway’s fishing tackle (with the tantalizing possibility of lost manuscripts tucked inside), you know you’re not in for a run-of-the-mill mystery . . . McCafferty’s skill at creating memorable characters has even the walk-ons warming to the spotlight…bittersweet.”—Booklist

“Colorful characters and forbidding locales complement the book’s central puzzle, which has surprising real-life roots.”—Publishers Weekly

“An exciting adventure set against some of the West’s most stunning landscapes. Cleverly interwoven with the true story of Hemingway’s lost trunk, it goes far to elucidate the mystique of fly-fishing.”—Kirkus

“McCafferty’s wryly bantering characters are irresistible, his humor tangy, and his lyricism potent as he matches escalating action with intriguing disquisition…A sharply ironic and suspenseful tale surreptitiously veined with profound insights into love, friendship, cultural collisions, and dire conflicts over wildlife and land, the sacred and the profitable.”—Booklist (starred)

“Rich in history, local color, and unique characters.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Explosive, gripping and not to be missed.  Keith McCafferty gets the West just right…McCafferty is an impressive writer.”—Margaret Coel, New York Times bestselling author of The Man Who Fell From the Sky and Winter’s Child
 
“Keith McCafferty understands that there is much more to a riveting mystery than what is commonly found in the typical whodunit. He also knows that a rousing good tale can often shine a light on important matters that deserve our attention…He writes with heart and command of the story that sparkles on every page.”—Michael McGarrity, New York Times bestselling author of Backlands
 
“McCafferty nails the delicate balance between humor and heft in a genuine way.”
—P.J. Tracy, New York Times bestselling author of Off the Grid
Keith McCafferty is the survival and outdoor skills editor of Field & Stream and the author of the Sean Stranahan mystery series, which includes The Royal Wulff Murders, The Gray Ghost Murders, Dead Man’s Fancy, Crazy Mountain Kiss, which won the 2016 Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Novel, and Buffalo Jump Blues. Winner of the Traver Award for angling literature, he is a two-time National Magazine Awards finalist. He lives with his wife in Bozeman, Montana.Copyright ©2017 Keith McCafferty. All Rights Reserved.

Preface

I first heard about Ernest Hemingway’s steamer trunk of fishing tackle, the lost treasure chest at the heart of this novel, from his oldest son, Jack. Jack and I were contributing editors for Field & Stream some thirty-odd years ago, and though not close friends, we shared a river from time to time. It was a blustery November day, easy to recall be- cause all November days on British Columbia’s Thompson River are blustery, and we were the only fishermen along a stretch of the river known as the Graveyard, just down the hill from the old white crosses where all the graves face north. On toward dark, Jack hooked a steel- head of fifteen or sixteen pounds, which I landed for him in the tailout after a long fight. We admired this great seafaring trout for a few seconds before releasing it, and celebrated with a thermos cup of hot chocolate into which I laced peppermint schnapps, in honor of my father.

After toasting the fish, I asked Jack if he thought his own father would have liked this kind of fishing—that is, wading on slippery boulders in a river haunted by the dead, casting hour after hour in miserable weather, and considering yourself lucky to hook up once every few days and manage not to drown. He said that Ernest would have enjoyed the challenge, but that he’d lost the heart to fly fish after a steamer trunk containing all his valuable gear was stolen or lost from Railway Express in 1940, en route to Ketchum, Idaho, where he was a guest at the Sun Valley Lodge. In fact, Jack could only remember his father fly fishing once after the loss, in the Big Wood River.

This was an interesting insight into the famous author’s psyche, but at the time I was more interested in casting my own fly rod than the fate of another man’s tackle or the sentiments it evoked.

Years passed, and I had no reason to recall the story until my wife, Gail, persuaded me to set a novel in northwestern Wyoming, where Hemingway stayed at the L Bar T Guest Ranch during five summers and falls in the 1930s, hunting, fishing, and writing. By then Jack had died and I sought to verify the details of his story with Patrick Heming- way, Ernest’s sole surviving son, who lives in my hometown. I spoke with him at a local screening of the PBS American Masters series film Ernest Hemingway: Rivers to the Sea. Patrick was kind enough to indulge my questions and said he recalled the lost trunk, adding that it probably contained best-quality bamboo fly rods and reels ordered from the House of Hardy catalog. Hardy was the premier London maker, and Patrick remembered helping his father convert the prices from pounds sterling to American dollars.

Today, only one piece of Ernest Hemingway’s fly fishing tackle survives in good condition, a Hardy rod in a model called the Fairy that he had with him when he first went to Idaho. It is displayed at the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vermont, along with a letter to Field & Stream that Jack wrote about the missing tackle.

As concerns the possibility that the trunk contained Hemingway treasures unrelated to piscatorial pursuits, and perhaps of far greater value, there is one way to find out.

Pour a drink, light a fire, and turn the page. I have a story to tell.

US

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