Eighteen months ago, Aleut Kate Shugak quit her job investigating sex crimes for the Anchorage DA’s office and retreated to her father’s homestead in a national park in the interior of Alaska. But the world has a way of beating a path to her door, however remote. In the middle of one of the bitterest Decembers in recent memory ex-boss – and ex-lover – Jack Morgan shows up with an FBI agent in tow. A Park ranger with powerful relatives is missing, and now the investigator Jack sent in to look for him is missing, too.
Reluctantly, Kate, along with Mutt, her half-wolf, half-husky sidekick, leaves her wilderness refuge to follow a frozen trail through the Park, twenty thousand square miles of mountain and tundra sparsely populated with hunters, fishermen, trappers, mushers, pilots and homesteaders. Her formidable grandmother and Native chief, Ekaterina Shugak, is – for reasons of her own – against Kate’s investigation; her cousin, Martin, may be Kate’s prime suspect; and the local trooper, Jim Chopin, is more interested in Kate than in her investigation. In the end, the sanctuary she sought after five and a half years in the urban jungles may prove more lethal than anything she left behind in the city streets of Anchorage.
Weaving Alaska’s history, Aleut Culture, Suspense, Murder into one fabulous novel! Loving Alaska history, Aleut Culture, suspense, murder, a smidgen of romance all weaved into a perfect beginning to a great series about a very courageous, intelligent, determined, driven woman born into an Aleut culture that brings pioneer living and all of its challenges to a boiling point.Â
Thank God it was free. But I wish I did not waste my time on this. This really should have just been a 20 page short story. About 5% of the book was devoted to solving the mystery. The other 95% of the book was devoted to grossly over detailed descriptions of houses, people, snow etc. If you are interested in the details of what snow looks like, or what is in the kitchen cabinets of the characters or how the Aleut’s live, then this is the book for you. If you are looking for a good mystery, look elsewhere.
Snoooooooze …. This book was so boring! I only finished it because I was hopeful that the story-line would eventually pick up and get more interesting. I read the book on the recommendation of one of my favorite authors, Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series), and am sorry to say I was sorely disappointed. I felt no depth or connection with the characters. In fact, I had a hard time keeping track of who was who, who was related to whom, and what significance they played in the story. I was shocked to reach…