Opening paragraphs.................................

     The cold Alaskan water pulled at the fishing boats that lined the dock, the boats straining against their moorings to run free with the tide.  The water here in the small harbor at Angoon, a fishing village on the western shore of Admiralty Island off southeast Alaska, was steel-black beneath the clouds and dimpled with rain, but was clear even with that, a window beneath the weathered pilings to a world of sunburst starfish as wide as garbage cans, jellyfish the size of basketballs, and barnacles as heavy as a longshoreman's fist.  Alaska was like that, so vigorous with life that it could fill a man and lift him and maybe even bring him back from the dead.

-Robert Crais,  The Last Detective