Review of “No Way to Die” (Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries Book 7) by Warren C Easley

A Great Procedural Murder Mystery About the Oregon Coast  (As reviewed on Goodreads, 11/22/2022) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49534640-no-way-to-die “No Way to Die” is set in Coos Bay Oregon, a depressed little seaport that the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry has in its sights as a main tanker terminal on the West Coast. There is money to be made by local luminaries, but local environmentalists are warning about the potential for disaster that the project threatens the community. Cal Claxton is vacationing nearby with his daughter, who is taking a break from a high pressure research project at Harvard. While they are fly fishing in a scenic creek, his daughter discovers a body, hog-tied and floating next to a tree snag. The vacation is over, and we are pulled into local scandals, corruption, drug running and of course murder. Warren Easley’s Cal Clayton crime stories are getting better and better. “No Way to Die” is a thoughtful, action packed and totally believable story of big money corrupting a small city that is trying to recover its glory. I have read a couple of his earlier novels, and Easley’s writing style compares well against some of the acknowledged masters of mystery writing. If you like John McDonald’s Florida based Travis McGee novels you will fall happily into Cal Clayton’s Oregon. Easley’s characters reveal themselves in their action and dialogue with verve and intelligence. Calvin Clayton, a widowed lawyer who lives in Dundee Oregon (wine country), is slowly but surely becoming one of the great fiction characters of the genre.  What makes the story “unputdownable” is how Easley skillfully tells the story, making it seem effortless and casual. He weaves together the pressure of running a small law firm, the lives of people struggling on the coast, in addition to following tenuous leads in a murder investigation. The novel unfolds and we are treated to scenic coastal beauty as well as various and surprising depictions of weak people trying to be decent (and occasionally but not always succeeding). We also meet people driven by greed and depravity, but even then we get a glimpse of their humanity.  Cal is not a rich lawyer. He needs to keep his practice afloat, while working through the dangerous investigation. Oregon itself is ever present, it’s natural beauty and treacherous back roads are always zipping along with the intriguing investigatory details that slowing and deliciously come together. But most of all "No Way to Die" is a brilliant procedural that has to take a wild ride with dead ends and trapdoors galore before it all fits together.  It is exciting to watch a good writer in the process of becoming better and better. Easley’s Cal Clayton mysteries are on their way to becoming part of Oregon lore. “No Way to Die” is a great read.