Book Summary and Reviews of Dead Man's Fancy by Keith McCafferty

Dead Man's Fancy by Keith McCafferty

Dead Man's Fancy

A Sean Stranahan Mystery

by Keith McCafferty

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2014, 336 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Wolves howl as a riderless horse returns at sunset to the Culpepper Dude Ranch in the Madison Valley. The missing woman, Nanika Martinelli, is better known as the Fly Fishing Venus, a red-haired river guide who lures clients the way dry flies draw trout.

As Sheriff Martha Ettinger follows hoof tracks in the snow, she finds one of the men who has fallen under the temptress's spell impaled on the antler tine of a giant bull elk, a kill that's been claimed by a wolf pack. An accident? If not, is the killer human or animal? With painter, fly fisherman, and sometimes private detective Sean Stranahan's help, Ettinger will follow clues that point to an animal rights group called the Clan of the Three-Clawed Wolf and to their svengali master, whose eyes blaze with pagan fire.

In their most dangerous adventure yet, Stranahan and Ettinger find themselves in the crossfire of wolf lovers, wolf haters, and a sister bent on revenge, and on the trail of an alpha male gone terribly wrong.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. McCafferty's beautifully written third mystery… The complex, multilayered story smoothly switches from one character to another." - Publishers Weekly

"[Dead Man's Fancy] delivers a carefully plotted western procedural…Good reading for fans of [C. J.] Box, Craig Johnson, Nevada Barr, and Paul Doiron, although McCafferty has his own distinctive voice." - Booklist

"Although the plot takes its own time to unfold, it doesn't drag; McCafferty's understated prose deserves to be savored. " - Kirkus

This information about Dead Man's Fancy was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Keith McCafferty

Keith McCafferty is the awardwinning survival and outdoor skills editor of Field & Stream. He has written articles for Fly Fisherman Magazine, Mother Earth News, and the Chicago Tribune. He lives with his wife in Bozeman, Montana. This is his third novel.

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