Book Review: Big Breath In by John Straley

Posted on January 7, 2025 at 7:31 am by Gene Ambaum

Big Breath In by John Straley. Soho Crime, 2024. 9781641296540. 274pp.

Delphine has cancer, and she doesn’t have much longer to live. After stepping into the middle of a violent incident involving a man, the woman he’s beating up, and the baby she’s holding, Delphine proves she’s still a bit of a badass (though a weakening, balding badass). A friend asks her to help find a kidnapped child, which leads her back to the woman and makes her determined to save all of the kids involved.

She spends some time remembering her husband, who she worked with as an investigator before she stopped doing that and started researching marine life instead. She also spends a lot of time thinking about the lives of whales, mostly sperm whales, and using her knowledge of them to reflect on what she’s experiencing which involves white supremacists, child trafficking, and murder. (There are enough great people in the book to balance out the horrific.)

Worth noting: This takes place in Seattle, where I live, but it’s not the city I know. This at first felt strange given how much time I spend wandering around downtown, often near where Delphine is getting treatment in the book. But after a bit I connected with the setting as the dark side of a bleak, near-future Seattle, and it worked for me. I’m curious how my fellow Seattleites will feel about this book. (I hope it doesn’t fan the flames of this “Seattle has fallen” nonsense. It’s still a great city.)