The Woman Who Married a Bear — John Straley

Cecil Younger is the black sheep son of a straight-arrow family. He writes poems, drinks too much, broods about the lovely girl who left him, and works as a private investigator in the port of Sitka, Alaska. Now he is being paid handsomely to probe the ugly murder of a Native American hunting guide. It is a case that will take him from the gritty Alaskan urban lower depths to the dark heart of the northern wilderness, and from a sordid tangle of sex and greed to primitive myth and magic. It is a bitingly vivid and suspenseful journey, and he takes you with him every swift, dangerous step and leap of the way.