A Grave Denied by Dana Stabenow

I picked up A Grave Denied at the library for my trip to India, but didn't get around to reading it until returning home. The back cover blurb said it was based in The Park up in Alaska, so after having just read The Final Frontiersman based up in Alaska, I thought it was worth a shot. This is one part of a long series of mysteries based around a sort of lady PI up there named Kate Shugak who used to work sex crimes for the Anchorage police.

It's spring, the weather has moderated and the middle/high school kids are on a field trip up to study a local glacier. While exploring, 2 of the kids wander into a cave in the glacier and find a body with a huge shotgun hole in his chest. This starts a chain of events involving numerous characters from the small town near The Park called Niniltna. The stiff is a local handyman, Len, and Kate is asked by a suitor-wanna-be state policeman, Jim Chopin to do a little digging into guy's last known sightings. So she slowly traces out the last jobs he had done for the locals. Along the way, Kate's house gets torched in an attempt to get her off the case. The son of a Tribal boss, called Dandy (who wants to get on the police force) also goes out asking questions. Following a lead to Anchorage, Kate stumbles onto a teenager with all the signs of prior abuse. A little more digging shows that the Len was living under an alias and did a prior prison term as a sex offender. Not long after, Dandy is found dead of the same shotgun blast. Kate is sure that the girl's dad was the killer.

A back story has Kate caring for the teenage son of a deceased policeman/lover (the kid found the body). Johnny has struck up a developing friendship with Vanessa whose parents were dead and now living with some cousins old enough to be her grandparents. On a hunch, Kate goes back out to their homestead because the stiff had done some work out there and Kate was wondering if Vanessa might also have been molested.

The 'mom', Telma, is really screwed up. A passive, cookie baking nutcase. The 'dad', Virgil, worships the ground she walks on and is very protective of her. When Kate arrives, Virgil takes her down with a shovel and tries to bury her in the garden. Turns out ol' Telma had/has a serious case of post partum depression and killed all 5 babies she bore out there in the boondocks. Loyal and loving Virgil buried them all in their garden. During a job for Virgil, Len discovered the backyard cemetery and thinks he can blackmail Virgil for some money. After a few months of payments, Virgil ends the agreement with extreme prejudice and deposits Len in the glacier. Jim Chopin follows Kate to Virgil's place, finds him in the process of burying Kate and manages to subdue Virgil, finally wrapping up the case. In the end, the community all comes together and, in an Alaskan version of Extreme Homemaker, build Kate and Johnny a new house.

I thought this was pretty good. Kate is a heroine anyone could get behind. The story was well plotted with enough twists to keep me interested. I was kind of hoping for sort of an Alaskan Tony Hillerman who became famous for his weaving of Navaho culture into traditional mysteries, but sad to say, she is no Hillerman. This tale could have taken place anywhere, but would have been way more interesting with local culture being as critical to the story as the crime. While I did enjoy the story, I'm not sure at this point when I might venture back into Kate Shugak's neighborhood, but I might.

East Coast Don