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The Perfect Holiday Gift for a Fly Fishing Fan

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PRAISE FOR THE CLINCH KNOT
The newest Fly Fishing Mystery from John Galligan

"At the outset of Galligan's stunning third Montana-set fly-fishing mystery*(after 2005's The Blood Knot), Ned "Dog" Oglivie, a self-described "traveling drunk" and "trout hound" who lives out of his asthmatic 1984 Cruise Master RV, has befriended a jailed bull rider's daughter, Jesse Ringer, and her black boyfriend, D'Ontario Sneed. Then, off a mountain road outside Livingston, soon after an ugly encounter with skinheads, Dog finds Jesse shot to death on the ground and Sneed unconscious in Jesse's sealed car, nearly dead of carbon monoxide poisoning. Sneed's earthy mother, Aretha, supplies Dog with comfort and common sense as he seeks to prove Sneed didn't murder Jesse. With a plot as entangled as a drunkard's fishing line, this Big Sky excursion into the wilds of human frailty deftly and surely snags the imagination. The ending offers just a hint, elusive as that legendary brown trout of fishermen's dreams, of redemption for Galligan's beguiling antihero."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Working in troubled waters, a peripatetic fly fisherman catches murder, romance and the occasional trout.It’s been four years since Ned Ogilvie could think of himself as the husband, father and businessman he once was. A devastating family tragedy has propelled him into what he regards as an irrevocably altered state: “I am the Dog now. I am a trout hound. I fish, I drive, I fish, I drive, I fish.” Finding himself in picturesque Livingston, Mont., the Dog plans to plant his waders in the nearby Roam River, a fly-fishing Mecca. He’s temporarily sidetracked when Sneed and Jesse, a pair of engaging young lovers, attach themselves to him, making the Dog feel pleasantly avuncular and content just to hang out for a while. But Sneed is black, Jesse is white, and soon Livingston’s hate community takes notice. Jesse is murdered; Sneed is arrested; and the Dog knows the mighty Roam will have to wait longer. His task—to keep Sneed from being railroaded by reeling in the killer—is certainly challenging. But it turns out that the self-proclaimed trout hound has enough bloodhound in him to sniff out the dark stuff homicides are made of. It’s not the fly fishing, but the cast: good guys to root for, villains to hiss. Galligan (The Blood Knot, 2005, etc.) has the knack."
—Kirkus

"In Galligan’s third fly-fishing mystery, a subgenre he has made his own, Ned Oglivie, better known as Dog, is four years into a fishing-and-alcohol (vodka and Tang is the preferred beverage) binge that has brought him to the Yellowstone River in Livingston, Montana. He has befriended a young black man named D’Ontario Sneed and his new love, a local white girl named Jesse Ringer, and it seems that the deep hurt in Dog’s past may finally begin to heal. The idyllic interlude ends catastrophically when Jesse is found dead and D’Ontario is charged with murder and attempts suicide by carbon-monoxide poisoning. D’Ontario is left brain damaged, so it falls to Dog to prove his friend’s innocence and find the murderer. There is no shortage of suspects, each sinisterly eccentric and sharply drawn, and Dog’s quest takes more turns than a meandering trout stream. It’s just the thing for a blustery day when the rivers are blown out and the fish are off the bite."
—Booklist

As a sorrowful soul with a tortured past, Ned Oglivie, aka Dog, has spent more than a year or two fly fishing America’s greatest rivers – the only way he knows how to try and escape the tragic memories from his past that continue to haunt him.  But despite his best intentions to avoid emotional entanglements, he once again finds himself cast in the role as a seeker of justice when his latest fishing buddy, a young black man, is found barely alive inside a car from what seems like a failed suicide attempt, with his white girlfriend a mere few feet away, dead by a gunshot wound to the head. 

And so charged for the crime is the young man, D’Ontey, who by all appearances shot and killed his girlfriend and then attempted but failed to kill himself.  But Dog refuses to believe this story, and so begins the search for the truth; a truth that will pit him against small-town sheriffs, hate groups, drug dealers, and his own tendency to now and again still believe in the best of people against all odds.

This is the third in the series, and my most driving need right now is to get my hands on the first two.  After reading a book like this, it’s sometimes difficult to express just how appreciative one can feel to read an author who knows how to put into words thoughts and feelings that seem just like something you might have said had you had the talent of knowing the right words to say. 

Galligan takes the art of fly fishing, the magical beauty of it, and puts it into a place and time so solidly and vibrantly that even those who have never stepped into a fresh-water, freezing cold river to cast a line will still easily appreciate the intimate and liberating joy of it all.  But hey, that’s just the fishing part.  The rest is just as good - the mystery itself, the friendships, the secrets, the possibilities for redemption, the incongruity of hatred mixed with beauty, the jealousies, the loyalties - all fluidly combine into one story that touches just as deeply as it mystifies and challenges.  Read this book, guaranteed, you’ll love it! 
—New Mystery Reader