After reading this book, I realize how fun it is to read plot-driven books. Fast-paced and written well, this was a book I’d recommend. I know it’s part of a series and although I wish I would have started at the beginning, this worked well as a stand-alone novel. It doesn’t shy away from drama and crisis but fell a bit flat with character development, for me. I’m glad I read it and am so grateful to Soho Press for the opportunity to do so.

This is an interesting mystery with a well-crafted plot and lovable characters. Unfortunately it was also a lot nastier (and unnecessarily so) than I was expecting, which lessened my opinion of an otherwise excellent story.

Protagonist Cecil Younger is serving time in prison for (possibly) intended murder during a situation in the last installment of the series where his teenage daughter was kidnapped and assaulted. So! Guess what happens in this book? Yep, his teenage daughter is kidnapped and assaulted. Again!

It’s a disturbing sequence of events even without the history of the series, an underage girl beaten badly by a violent sexual predator. It absolutely could have been worse, and there’s some fantastic vigilante justice that follows, but it bugs me that we have a male author repeatedly placing this teenage girl in the same type of grotesque, upsetting, and gratuitous situation multiple times. If this is a schtick, it’s the worst one ever.

Which is a shame, because otherwise the book is a really, really good one. The plot is clever, the characters are wonderful and interesting, and outside of some of the more horrific scenes, it absolutely has some humor.

So, big-time trigger warning for truly terrifying kidnapping and assault of an underage female character, and for some prison violence as well, though this element felt more tastefully handled and didn’t bother me personally.

I’d read another of these, but I would want to know a fair amount about the plot ahead of time to make sure the author isn’t going to lean on this idea that the protagonist’s daughter is getting kidnapped/assaulted/tortured to drive the plot.

This was my first book to read by this author but I hope to read more soon! The characters and the story stay with you long after you finish it. Good, fast read. Highly recommend!!

Thank you Soho Press for this advance eARC!

So Far and Good by John Straley was a phenomenal book.
The Alaska setting just adds to the reading pleasure. Which I enjoyed!
This particularly plot-driven and intense book was just what I was hoping for and then some.
John's writing was so incredibly interesting and wonderfully done!

Stand alone book in a stand out detective series set in Alaska. Straley's newest "So Far and Good" has as much to do with the prison system and relationships as with classic detective stories, but he always holds onto the Noir strand. In this case his detective Cecil is behind bars and his daughter Blossom is trying to help her friend George, with a little help from Ned the boyfriend. Thanks due to Nancy Drew stories for a few names and plot points, but this is a contemporary and violent story, not a re-do! Stayed up late to finish...