Cold Hearted River

May 22, 2017
In McCafferty’s intriguing sixth Sean Stranahan mystery (after 2016’s Buffalo Jump Blues), the Montana fishing guide helps his ex-girlfriend, Sheriff Martha Ettinger, retrieve Frieda Toliver’s belongings from the ridge where she died during a surprise snowstorm. Among Frieda’s effects is an old fly-fishing wallet bearing the initials “EH.” Patrick Willoughby of the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club identifies the contents as an obscure three-fly cast favored by Ernest Hemingway—an odd coincidence, given that someone recently offered to sell Patrick a collection of Hemingway’s fishing tackle. Sean and Patrick go to appraise the gear and instead find the corpse of Frieda’s stepbrother. Sean’s efforts to locate the missing memorabilia and determine its provenance unearth tales of a stolen steamer trunk containing not just Hemingway’s rods and reels but also an unpublished short story. McCafferty writes about fly-fishing, Hemingway, and the American West with obvious affection and authority. Colorful characters and forbidding locales complement the book’s central puzzle, which has surprising real-life roots. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary.

June 1, 2017
A tragic accidental death, a suicide, and a probable murder roil the waters in prime Montana fishing country.Freida Toliver and her husband, Chuck, are out looking for shed antlers for Freida's chandelier business when they're overtaken by a snowstorm and a whopping drop in temperature. Chuck survives by shooting his horse and crawling into the carcass for warmth, but Freida and her horse vanish in the storm. Though a rescue party finds her in a bear den, she dies on the way to the hospital. Sheriff Martha Ettinger loses a finger trying and failing to prevent Chuck's suicide. When Martha and Sean Stranahan--watercolorist, fishing guide, part-time detective, and her sometime lover (Buffalo Jump Blues, 2016, etc.)--return to the scene to retrieve the pair's valuable saddles, they run into Wilhelm Winkler, who claims to be Freida's adoptive brother. Found in Freida's vest was a fly wallet marked EH and filled with very old flies. Patrick Willoughby and Kenneth Winston, Sean's friends at the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club, suggest that the wallet may have belonged to Ernest Hemingway. The writer lost an entire trunk of valuable trout fishing gear and possibly the start of a novel, and a letter Willoughby just received hints that someone may have found it. After Willoughby hires Sean to meet with the unsigned letter writer, he and a Plott hound belonging to a local woman find Winkler dead along the riverbank. Returning to the scene with his friend Sam, he finds Winkler's fly rod, which was evidently custom-built for Hemingway. Sean continues to hunt for the missing trunk, finds that chandeliers were the least of Freida's business endeavors, and travels as far as Michigan in search of further information. He uncovers a tangled web of clues while trying to balance his burgeoning relationship with Martha. 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.

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July 1, 2017

The brutally tragic deaths of a couple stranded in a spring snowstorm bring to light a fly wallet that may be tied to Ernest Hemingway's treasured fishing gear and his long-lost trunk containing unpublished work. Inspired by a true story, McCafferty's exciting sixth investigation (after Buffalo Jump Blues) featuring Montana fly fisherman Sean Stranahan tracks the chapters of Hemingway's life from Montana to Cuba and Wyoming.--ACT

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