Big Breath In

Praise for Big Breath In

BookPage’s Top 10 Books of the Month
Paste Magazine’s Most Anticipated Mysteries & Thrillers of Fall

“[Delphine] embark[s] upon a journey that will show her the worst that humanity has to offer — but also the best. Big Breath In is hard to put down and even harder to shake off afterward.”
—Sarah Weinman, The New York Times Book Review

“The magic in this book comes in great part from its never-say-die-before-it’s-time heroine and from its rendering, in spare and vivid prose, of her unique sensibility. Big Breath In is a winner that effectively combines emotional poignancy with breathtaking action.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Big Breath In is yet another John Straley book worth adding to your shelf. The nights are getting longer and darker; it’s time to pour a cup of your favorite beverage, play a Mountain Goats album, and ride along with Delphine, private eye.”
—Daily Sitka Sentinel

“A rollicking hero’s journey. Straley has always had an uncanny talent for combining violence and humor, and Big Breath In includes measures of both.”
—Anchorage Daily News

“Thought-provoking and unexpected . . . Straley regularly reminds us, the brain is not enough. Rather, it will be the community that protects us, if we can be protected at all.”
—Alta Journal

“There’s a sweet history behind [Straley’s] book . . . Part crime drama, scientific inquiry, and metafictional love letter, Big Breath In features a courageous, motorcycle-ripping heroine inspired by the grit and determination of the brilliant scientist the author has spent his life with.”
—Monterey County Weekly

“A beautiful and truly uplifting book. You’ll also learn an awful lot about sperm whales.”
—WYSO’s Book Nook

“For more than a quarter century, John Straley’s mystery and detective fiction have both enriched and diversified those genres at the same level as Dashiell Hammett, James Crumley, Carl Hiaasen and James Lee Burke. But in his new novel, Big Breath In, his deeply compassionate fiction transcends genre, taking us to altogether new places. Using the marine ecology work of his own internationally renowned wife, Jan, as a point of departure, John pays homage to the genius of one of the most beloved field biologists to ever emerge from the Pacific Northwest. No other fiction writer can do what John Straley has done.”
—Gary Paul Nabhan, recipient of the Western State Book Award, a John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing, and the James Beard Award for Food Writing

“The main character in Big Breath In kicked my heart to pieces. Straley’s book reads like an entire ecosystem, embracing the behaviors of whale species and motorcycle gangs; the minds of ticks compared to those of humans; an Augustinian prayer; coruscating humor; people both tender-hearted and heartless. . . As in a healthy ecosystem, everything in these pages—human and otherwise—illuminates the rest. My (bruised!) heart is smitten with Big Breath In.”
—Melinda Mueller, author of Mary’s Dust

“Easily my favorite book this year. Once again, John Straley serves up a masterclass in storytelling with this page-turning tale of mystery, loss, and kinship. Big Breath In is a story you don’t want to end, and you’ll instantly fall for Delphine, the main character with a heart as big as the whales she researches. John Straley has imbued every page of this novel with a deeply personal love that hits you hard.”
—Don Rearden, author of The Raven’s Gift

“As [Straley] explains in his moving acknowledgements, Big Breath In is inspired by his wife, a marine biologist who has had Parkinson’s disease for 20 years. He created Delphine in her honor, and she is a memorable, whip-smart fireball of a character . . . Straley’s prose shines with delightful images . . . A nonstop, high-octane crime novel featuring an unforgettable heroine with a whale-size heart.”
—BookPage, Starred Review

“Stellar . . . While this novel certainly has a complex and suspenseful story, it’s Delphine who’s the centerpiece. She’s simply a wonderful character: a woman who, even approaching the end of her life, is more concerned for the lives of strangers. This tale packs an emotional wallop.”
—Booklist

“[An] elegiac standalone. . . Straley seamlessly interweaves heart-pumping action, fascinating insights on whales’ social behavior, and poignant flashbacks to Delphine’s life before she got sick . . . It’s potent stuff.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The real star here is the tranquil, hard-won meditations on mortality tucked into every crevice.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“An emotional experience that features a protagonist who will pull on your heartstrings as you go on this adventure with her . . . Straley’s loaded and memorable prose draws you in deeply.”
—Bookreporter

“Unpredictable, unlikely, unusual and highly philosophical . . . Delphine, with her beyond-all-odds determination, is a magnetic character and her struggle takes on saintly proportions, keeping the pages turning.”
—Crime Fiction Lover


Praise for John Straley

“Straley knows how to wrap deadly violence in a bubble of black humor that suits the novel’s beautiful but harsh setting, where whales open their maws to dine on oceans of salmon fry and men kill one another while ravens fly overhead, screaming with laughter.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“[Straley] writes crime novels populated by perpetrators whose hearts are filled with more poetry than evil.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“It’s always a pleasure to read Straley’s vivid studies of these folks—the slightly cracked, rugged and very funny characters of the Far North.”
—The Seattle Times

“Lesser writers look to their characters’ poor choices and attempts to rectify them, John Straley loves his characters for just those choices. Hölderlin wrote: ‘Poetically man dwells on the earth.’ Some of us wind up in limericks, some in heroic couplets. But damned near every one of us, sooner or later, ends up in one of Straley’s wise, wayward, wonderfully unhinged novels.”
—James Sallis, author of Drive and the Lew Griffin mysteries

“What a warm, engaging, profoundly human book this is: its skin crackling, its heart enormous and open. It’s a mystery with judicious blasts of violence and dread, but it opens also onto the bigger mysteries—of community, of family, of place. The several lives that intertwine throughout the story reach moments of quiet grace that resonate stealthily but deeply.”
—John Darnielle, author of Wolf in White Van

“John Straley, one of Alaska’s best-known and best-loved writers, continues to deliver.”
—Anchorage Daily News

“Terrific . . . Like the earlier novels in the series, this one is funny and quirky, a lighter change of pace from the Younger books and a delight for fans of small-town comic mysteries with a bit of bite.”
—Booklist, Starred Review

“Excellent . . . Readers looking for action will be amply rewarded, but the book’s main appeal lies in the vividly drawn characters and the author’s enchanting descriptions of the Alaskan outdoors. This thoughtful look at the politics and culture of a bygone era should win Straley new fans.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review