Alaska writer weaves mysteries from tall tales and keen observation

He doesn't live here anymore, but when he ventures south to visit family, the current writer laureate for the state of Alaska is able to squint just hard enough to see the old Northwest through the new condos.

"The culture of this part of the world," he says on a recent afternoon at a cafe in Bellingham, "is still influenced by the rain and the mountains and the ocean more than it is by Microsoft or Starbucks. Nothing against Microsoft or Starbucks, but they don't shape the weather yet."

It sums up Straley's philosophy on what makes life from here to Alaska interesting — and worth living.

Characters in Straley's highly nontraditional mystery novels — whether the bumbling, self-effacing private detective, Cecil Younger, in his earlier books, or the lead character in his latest work, Slip Wilson, a hardscrabble North Cascades logger who gets caught up in a 1930s murder mystery and subsequent chase played out in the Inside Passage — invariably are products of the winds that batter them, the big trees that fall on them and the drizzly fog that dampens their spirits.

Local historical events, such as the 1919 Centralia Massacre, also find their way, with gut-wrenching impact, into Straley's work. In his new book, "The Big Both Ways," the protagonist has to negotiate the rough landscape of labor strife on the 1930s Seattle waterfront (colorfully re-created for Straley years ago by the late, great Seattle columnist Emmett Watson) to get out of town the hard way: by rowboat, all the way to Alaska.

All of this is inspired, of course, both by history and events in Straley's own life. He grew up in Seattle, where his father, Walter, was the head of Pacific Northwest Bell. Straley's dad, a civic booster with affection for the arts and for the natural surroundings of the place he lived, hauled his young son to the Methow Valley, where a local guide, Jack Wilson, was working hard to promote the construction of Highway 20. The younger Straley quickly became enamored with the ways of the woods — and the tough-luck, rough-living people who lived in them.

After his family moved to New York City when he was a teen, Straley continued to spend summers in the Methow until he was a young man. It was there one day, deep in the backcountry of the Pasayten Wilderness, that he met his wife, Janice Morrison, who in 1977 would lead him to Alaska, where she now works as a marine biologist.

An identity crisis ensued. "I was a horseshoer in the Methow, working with stock," he recalls. "I got to Sitka and there was one horse on the whole island."

But he grew to appreciate, then love, the place. Eventually, he was hired by a young lawyer who needed an investigator and, learning that Straley had an English degree from the University of Washington, declared, in typical Alaskan fashion, "Close enough." Straley began working as a private investigator, a job he still performs part-time for the Sitka public defender's office.

It put him in touch with criminal behavior, Alaska style — only in the big-city environs of Anchorage, he says, do people actually try to get away with crime — and got him to thinking about writing mystery novels. His first, "The Woman Who Married a Bear," was perfectly timed, released just as new, literate crime fiction from far-flung places was highly sought by publishing houses. It was a hit. He's been at it ever since.

In his new role as writer laureate, Straley often gives kids in small Alaskan villages advice that has a broader audience: Write what you know. It's a lot richer than you might think.

"They're right at the crossroads of this ancient lifestyle that's right in conflict with the modern world: TV, Game Boys, walrus hunting and beaver trapping. I really think if they can capture that, just what they hear, see, smell and experience, it could be something valuable."

Fortunately for those of us who love a tall tale, well told, with just enough mystery and local flora, fauna and history to catch our eye, Straley takes his own advice.

He has a keen eye — and uncommon appreciation — for the unusual, both in nature and people. And he has a knack for painting mental images, often bordering on poetic, of spectacular landscapes where imperfection, it always seems to turn out, resides only in those silly creatures walking upright through the middle of it.

Time will tell if that's what the great masses of readers want. But it's the only kind of fiction that's real enough for John Straley to write.

"People who really make it in crime writing have a winning formula that they stick to," Straley says, with a shrug. "I'm sort of just dreaming my way through this really interesting, exciting life I've found myself in — and trying to make sense of it."

Ron Judd's Trail Mix column appears here every Thursday.

To contact him: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com.