Butcher's Paper (Sad Fisherman's Song) - Rilo Kiley

The Royal Wulff Murders

Author: Keith McCafferty
Pages: 330
Review Copy Acquired from: Viking

Brief Summary:
A man is found in the Madison River with a fly fishing hook, a royal wulff, through his lip. At first it appears to be nothing more than an accidental drowning. However, there is one piece of evidence indicating that this just might be murder. Sheriff Martha Ettinger refuses to dismiss this contradictory evidence and launches an investigation. Meanwhile, Sean Stranahan, artist and part time P.I., is hired to catch a trout for a sexy, mysterious singer, Velvet Lafayette. Distracted by Velvet's beauty, he fails too notice until too late that he might be in too deep.

Review:
Fishing, fly or in any other variety, is not my thing at all. Heck, I hardly even eat fish, mostly only under duress. I am perfectly happy to let them keep doing their thing. Nor do I have any desire to ever go fishing myself. Mysteries aren't my preferred reading either. But I try to be somewhat open-minded about my reading choices, so when the lure of a fly fishing mystery was dropped in front of me, I bit.

Should I have? Maybe not. The opening parts were definitely hard on me. There was so much fishing, like back-to-back fishing. This probably would have been okay if there had been some interesting conversations accompanying the fishing, but a lot of it was just someone out fishing with lots of details of fish and lures and bait and whatever. So not my thing.

Thankfully, things picked up when the sheriff got more page time. I liked her; she's a sassy woman kicking butt in a traditionally masculine profession. Plus, she doesn't fish, which meant that that did not happen much when she was around.

On the contrary, I did not like Velvet at all. The stage name is ridiculous, but her real name, Vareda Beaudreux, is no better. Really though, that's not the issue, because that would be absurd and unfair. Velvet/Vareda is one of those women that men all of over the world seem to obsess over: beautiful, tortured, mysterious. A completely different writer, John Green, has written two books about girls like this. What is the fascination, guys? I'd like to know because I so do not get it. Throw the crazy ones back!

Basically, I'm not an ideal judge of this book. However, I do think that as mysteries go, it's a pretty good one. Anyone who loves to fish and to read mysteries should not miss this.

Rating: 2/5

"Imagine myself as a fisherman casting out his lonely line
He's caught something, he reels it in
Only to find that the hook has snagged
His old broken heart
He reels it, throws it back
He knows it's not his time
But he'd better find love quickly
Because drinking, song, and fishing
Just ain't going to cut it this time
In this life"