Time was when Delphine Stockard served as her husband John’s partner in D & J Investigations, which helped criminal defense attorneys build their cases. But even before John was killed by a drunk driver, they dissolved the partnership, and Delphine, trained as a biologist, went back to her first love: studying the mental processes of large-brain animals.

Now, she’s been stricken with pancreatic cancer, and the end is clearly upon her. In the meantime, though, John’s old friend Tom Foster, who still works as a PI, pleads with her to help him locate a 15-month-old whose mother sold him as a newborn to Tyler Dearborn, a self-described rancher who’s rumored to have pimped out endless young women and sold their offspring to finance his dreams of amassing a fortune in gold.

Delphine’s not interested in bringing the repellant Tye to justice; she just wants to recover the three babies she’s told are traveling with him. She has no trouble locating Tye and his associate, the Babysitter, but neither of them will listen to reason, and the dying Delphine brings limited resources to the job of persuading them.

While Big Breath In stands alone, longtime Straley fans will recognize the characteristic wit, heart, and contemplation of life that threads through every one of his books—and discover a new heroine to fall in love with.

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