A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stebenow

I'd read one other book by this Alaskan author that while good, didn't quite grab me. I was hoping for an Inuit version of Tony Hillerman who would weave Alaskan legend into her books like Hillerman tapped the heritage of the Navajo. It just didn't do it for me. Maybe I should learn and not start in the middle of an author's long series of stories about the same character (there are about 20 Kate Shugak books). So, courtesy of West Coast Don's Kindle archive, I grabbed this, the first Kate Shugak book.

A little backstory. Kate (of the Shugak tribe, if I read it right) lives way the hell out in a national park on 160 acres with her half wolf, Mutt. No neighbors (of the two legged variety) are within miles. Drives a souped up snowmobile. Used to be an investigator for the Anchorage D.A. mostly doing cases on domestic or child abuse. One case got her throat partially slit and damaged her vocal cords. That was the case that send her off to the wilderness. Grizzlies were safer than deranged parents.

The park has a new ranger on staff, kid named Miller (whose daddy happens to be in Congress) full of ideas about the park belonging to the people and should be opened up more for the public. The locals don't agree. After a public hearing and then a fight in the local bar, Miller disappears. An investigator from Anchorage goes looking and he disappears, too. Not hearing from his son, Miller the elder has the FBI check it out, the FBI talks to the Anchorage DA who calls on Kate, who reluctantly agrees (for $400 a day plus expenses).

Not being too many people in the booming town of Niniltna, Kate talks to her grandmother, surrogate father, a former beau, the park staff, the barkeeper, her cousin; just about everybody. And someone was taking a few pot shots at her, mostly as target practice because everyone up there can dang well shoot a rifle - sort of required when the noise outside could just as well be a bear as a neighbor.

This was the first in the Kate Shugak series. According to her website (and a very entertaining blog), this book was misplaced in her father's garage for two years before getting it to a publisher. And guess what . . . turned out to be an Edgar award winner. So maybe I had been too harsh. Had I started with this one, I might have plowed along with other of her Shugak titles. Standard detective fare, yes, but  told in the harsh light (or darkness) of an Alaskan winter while giving us a taste of the quirks and peculiarities of the Alaskan mindset and behaviors. The TV show Northern Exposure was about a fish out of water living amongst a bunch of unique characters. Stebenow gives us more of a gut check about what is like way back in the wilderness of Alaska; the good and the not so good.

East Coast Don