Customer Reviews

A Cold Day For Murder

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

A rookie federal Park Ranger/son-of-a-congressman, and an investigator sent to find him, go missing in the cold expanse of Kate Shugak's Alaskan Park (occupying "twenty million acres, almost four times the size of Denali National Park but with less than one percent of the tourists.") Reluctantly, Kate, a former D.A's investigator herself until a run-in with a child molester left him dead and her soured her on the job and a major portion of "civilization," is on the case.

This is the first of Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak mystery series, and I'm glad I went back and started at the beginning. The reader is introduced to Jack Morgan, the aforementioned D.A., with whom Kate had an affair before leaving his employ in Anchorage to return home to the environs and inhabitants of her native Village and Park. The characters and locale will become old familiar friends as this series wends on.

The introduction to Jack Morgan is particularly resonant:"He looked like John Wayne ready to run the claim jumpers off his gold mine on that old White Mountain just a little southeast of Nome, if John Wayne had been outfitted by Eddie Bauer." (If you are clueless about the humour, I suggest you go over to videos and get a copy of the movie "North to Alaska" - pay attention to the song being sung during the credits.) That Johnny Horton song is on jukeboxes everywhere here in our part of the Tundra, and everybody sings along ;-) And, speaking of jukeboxes and bars, the scene at Bernie's Bar in the book is really a hoot!

Along the way to finding out what happened to the Ranger and his would-be rescuer, Stabenow gives the reader an overview of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and life in the villages. It's a good start to a good series and I recommend it.

There's a lot to like about A COLD DAY FOR MURDER. Kate Shugak is a much more realistic character than most female private eyes on the best-seller list. She's an Aleut Indian and former investigator for the Anchorage District Attorney's office, but at the beginning of the story, she's returned home to the Alaskan northland, sulking about a case gone wrong during which she was brutally injured. She's been hiding out, pretty much living a hermit's existence when Jack Morgan, her former boss and lover, shows up to ask her to investigate the disappearance of a Park Ranger, who's been missing for six weeks, and one of his investigators who went looking for him. Coincidentally, the park ranger is also a Congressman's son.
The best part of the book is the atmosphere. It's cold up there and people get around by snow machine and plane or helicopter. Everything is expensive because it must be flown in. There's moose hunting and played out gold and silver mines and drunken Aleuts whose favorite pastime is fighting. The Aleut families are close-knit and there is reverence for seniors, as is evidenced by Ekaterina, Kate's grandmother, one of the first people Kate talks to about the case. She's the former president of the Native American Council and she plays dumb about what happened. The Aleuts hate Outsiders and a missing park ranger doesn't concern them much.
The structure of A COLD DAY FOR MURDER is pretty straight-forward. Shugak, and her dog Mutt, a part wolf Siberian husky, track the ranger's movements the day he disappeared. He wasn't too popular, being a greenie and all and recommending that the park be opened for Outsiders. The dialogue is sometimes repetitive and any astute reader can figure out who done it by about mid book. But I'm so starved for a Hillerman replacement that I plan to order another Kate Shugak mystery.

Kate Shugak is a loner. She's a loner on a homestead on federal land in Alaska. She's a loner because she killed a child abuser years ago and it haunts her. It left physical and mental scars. All of this makes Kate a unique personality in mystery fiction. But she also has friends-half the people on the tribal grounds are relatives and many of the others are good friends. They add more unique flavor to this mystery. Kate is called in to find a friend who went missing while searching for a congressman's son who is missing. During the investigations, all of these unique personalities come together along with plenty of other local flavoring. Dana Stabenow has created a compelling, sympathetic series family. I hope to see a lot more of Stabenow and Shugak.

Aleut detective Kate Shugak, formerly a gifted investigator for the Anchorage D.A.'s office, moved back to Alaska's far north country after a horrible child abuse case left her scarred physically and emotionally. She now resides on a 160-acre homestead with her half-wolf, half-husky, half-breed canine, Mutt, and makes her living as a private investigator. "A Cold Day for Murder," Dana Stabenow's debut mystery in this wonderful series featuring PI Shugak won an Edgar award in 1993.

A national park ranger has gone missing in the Alaskan boondocks in the middle of winter, which signifies almost certain death from exposure. It has been more than six weeks since anyone heard from him. The young man's father, a US Congressman, demands that every effort be made to find his son. When the FBI agent assigned to search for the ranger goes missing, Kate Shugak, a native of the area where the two men were last seen, and an expert in Arctic wilderness survival skills, is asked to take the case, she accepts although their trail is now colder than the weather.

Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak novels are consistently good to excellent, and this first one is a real favorite of mine. The author delves into Kate's background, presents some of her family members, spins a thrilling mystery, and touches on the political issues of environmental protection and loss of native cultures that Ms. Shugak holds dear. She also explores the relationship between Jack Morgan, Kate's former boss and lover, and our sleuth heroine.

One of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much, and many others in the series, is their Arctic setting and the details of native life and culture. The author's descriptions of the region's physical geography are wonderful. Her characters are original, complex and the dialogue is excellent - full of dark humor. Kate Shugak is super savvy, tough, prickly, and vulnerable, although she hides it well. She has a deep loyalty and abiding love for her people and the land.

A terrific read and a winning mystery series!
JANA

In A Cold Day For Murder Dana Stabenow's portrayal of Kate Shugak as a strong, sad, solitary woman, willing to help anyone in need, captures the reader's heart. Intertwined with the disappearance of the park ranger, who Kate sets out to find, is the plight of Native Americans struggling to hold on to their traditions while faced with changes forced on them by government regulations. I look forward to reading the other books in this series to see how Kate evolves as she takes on other cases.

I guess when an author doesn't have enough content, she (or he) supplements the story with lots of foul language. Call me a prude (whatever) but I don't care for the use of profanity, and that was just in the first 30 minutes of reading--from the f*** word to using 'Jesus Christ' as profanity. I didn't pay anything for this Kindle version, and I removed it from the device almost immediately. There are better books with more mystery and no expletives that are worth the time to read, but not this one.

A promising start to the series. I have ordered the next book, and am looking forward to reading it.

The first in the Kate Shugak series, this book begins a tad slowly...and the reader might want to put the book down and forget it. But that would be a big mistake, as I soon found out!

Because this is not only the story of a truly unique PI, hardboiled and independent Aleut native Kate Shugak, but also the story of an entire subculture that lives in temperatures and conditions that would probably kill the rest of us. I speak of rural Alaska--and if you didn't know much about it before reading this book, you sure will by the time you are done.

Although there is a mystery and a crime to be solved in this book, the star is Alaska itself and the very independent characters who populate its sparse and frozen countryside. The story itself concerns the disappearance of an overeager park ranger who just happens to be the son of a U.S. Senator back on the mainland. And the FBI agent originally sent to find the ranger is missing as well. Kate is asked to step in, which she does very reluctantly. But this reader was much more fascinated with Kate's living conditions than the plot.

Perhaps later in the series, the plot and description of the countryside even out. It's enough to make me want to keep reading!

I was very excited to get this book. I had seen the series, but it is so hard to get ahold of the earlier books. When I saw this first book for sale without having to pay the extra shipping for a used book I was very happy. Maybe I spent too much time looking forward to it. I didn't really bond to the lead character. The past was more a more interesting story to me then what was taking place. I didn't grow to care about Anna enough to make the extra effort, and cost, to buy the next books.

I like mysteries and I used to live in Alaska, so I was excited to find this series and had high hopes for it. However, instead of the setting serving as another interesting character, the author's use and references to Alaska I found forced and contrived. The main character seemed like yet another cold-hearted-I-can-do-everything-myself woman afraid of showing her feelings for fear that it would get in the way of her professional life. I found her typical and uninteresting.