Customer Reviews

Grave Denied

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This entry is number 13 in the Kate Shugak series. If you've enjoyed the previous 12 Kate Shugaks, then you'll love this entry.

Kate is still trying to deal with having young Johnny Morgan living with her in her one-room cabin. She knows that a confrontation with his mother will come sooner than either she or Johnny wants.

Johnny and some of his classmates find a dead body in a glacier. Trooper Jim Chopin has his plate full and asks Kate to investigate why the Park's handyman was killed. When she starts asking questions, she finds out more than she wants to know about her fellow Park rats.

In the meantime, Jim Chopin turns up the heat on their non-existent, but definitely "something's going on" relationship. Kate thinks she's sure what she thinks about that - well, maybe.

Stabenow is adept in this outing in keeping the identity of the killer under wraps until the end - and the reason for the killing will stun you.

Stabenow has written another excellent mystery. Her writing is so good you can almost smell the spring in Alaska and find yourself being glad the winter is over.

After a few gruesome volumes, it's nice to see Stabenow back in form. As other reviewers noted, Kate's friend and sometime lover, State Trooper Jim Chopin, asks her to investigate a mysterious death: a man found frozen in an advancing glacier, his cabin burned. And when Kate begins to investigate, her own life and property also (literally) come under fire. The steps of Kate's investigation will appeal to fans of the whodunit genre, with an Alaskan flavor. Kate methodically visits possible suspects, each a source of color and sometimes humor. The solution of the case left me feeling happily satisfied, an increasingly rare response to books I see these days.

Stabenow relaxes and lets us have fun with Kate. At times, the novel's style made me think I was reading a cozy. The author finds humor in Kate's new parenting role, as she learns how to cope with a teenager she has inherited from previous novels. Some of the best scenes involve Kate's relationship with her dog, Mutt, a part-wolf who seems to read Kate's mind. As usual, the cast of characters holds our attention, with tiny subplots: Kate's best friend gets a visit from a (deliberately) long-lost brother and fourteen-year-old Johnny remains determined to stay with Kate, rather than his blood relatives. The endings seem realistic, not at all contrived.

It is SO nice to pick up a book that doesn't tempt me to skip pages, let alone peek at the ending. This one was a joy to read -- I kept wishing it wouldn't end!

Fourteen-year-old Johnny Morgan is on a field trip with his class from school when he discovers a body hidden in a glacier. The victim, Leonard Dreyer, was a handyman who was hired by many local people to do odd jobs for them. Johnny is living with Kate Shugak, a private investigator who was once romantically involved with Johnny's father Jack, and who promised him that she would take care of Johnny after Jack's death. Kate helps Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin investigate the case. When Kate's life is threatened, Jim decides to fire her for her own protection, but to no avail. As always, this is an interesting mystery set in the beautiful Alaskan area near Prince William Sound. Stabenow hits all of the right notes in portraying the off-again-on-again relationship between Kate and Jim and shows us a softer side of Kate as she relates to Johnny and her friends. The final chapter in the book is a warm portrayal of the Alaskan spirit when people go out of their way to help their neighbors. This is one of my favorite books in this wonderful series.

I think that Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak novels are some of the best reading I have ever seen. I am a prolific reader, with fiction being one of my main hobbies. Her novels, while giving a wonderful tour of Alaska, are easy to read, easy to follow, and always interesting. I first discovered her while recovering from a serious operation and I was bedridden looking for something to take my mind off my discomfort. Someone brought me a Kate Shugak novel and I hadn't read three chapters when I went to the front of the book to see if there were more out there. I immediately ordered the entire collection and paid extra for rapid shipping. I have never regreted that, I only wish she would write more often.

I love a good mystery series, which is why I wish I had made the acquaintance of Dana Stabenow and the marvelous Kate Shugak a long time ago. However, that oversight has now been corrected and you may be sure I'll be eagerly looking for more. I would also urge anyone who also has failed to make the acquaintance of these two to remedy the situation immediately.

When a quartet of middle-schoolers discovers a body under the Grant Glacier while on a field trip, Kate is drawn in on two counts. First, her ward Johnny, son of her dead lover, was one of the four. Second, State Trooper Jim Chopin wants her help. He wants Kate, too, but that's another issue.

Then someone burns Kate's cabin to the ground-and would have done the same to her and Johnny if they'd been home. Jim officially throws her off the case, but now it's become personal.

I'll be the first to admit that, for me, Alaska is one of those places I'd like to visit but wouldn't live in. I'm too fond of being warm. But this particular visit was well worth the trip, an engrossing and multi-layered story that to a degree brought to mind the television series Northern Exposure. The people who inhabit Ms. Stabenow's book have the same unique character quirks while still never edging beyond the boundaries of reality. Meeting them for the first time, in all their fierce independence and determination to give no more to the Powers That Be than is absolutely necessary, it's not at all hard to believe that a man could live among them for decades without anyone ever learning much more about him than his name.

Ms. Stabenow masterfully manages to untangle the basic mystery-who killed the handyman?-while at the same time drawing the reader into the lives of the people among whom it took place, and by the time she's done and the final, shocking answer is revealed, one feels just as affected as do the members of her fictional community.

Those who have had the good fortune to make Kate Shugak's acquaintance will surely find this a worthy addition to their collection. Those who, like me, have just been introduced are going to want to start one.

In the cold and dangerous Alaskan landscape, a group of teenagers finds a corpse frozen at the edge of a glacier. After Johnny Morgan and his schoolmates make the gruesome discovery, the body is identified as local handyman Len Dreyer. State trooper Jim Chopin quickly calls in consulting investigator Kate Shugak to help him solve the case. Right away it is obvious from the huge bullet wound in Dreyer's chest that they are dealing with a murder. But why would anyone kill the man they all relied on for important work, big jobs and small? As Shugak works to answer this question, she soon realizes that while everyone in and around the Park is familiar with Dreyer, no one really knows him at all. And even a timeframe for the crime is difficult to construct as no one in the Park or in the nearby village of Niniltna even realized Dreyer was missing.

The Park is the national park where Shugak and others homestead. Shugak herself has a 160-acre homestead where she lives with her canine companion Mutt and now with Johnny Morgan, the fourteen-year-old son of her deceased lover. Smart and fiercely independent, Shugak takes on this case knowing that she is now responsible for housing and feeding Johnny in addition to herself. But in taking the case she exposes them both to extreme danger because somebody, perhaps Dreyer's killer, now wants her dead as well. Maybe Shugak is getting too close to the truth about this mysterious man.

Further complicating Shugak's work is her tense relationship with Chopin, a wannabe detective named Dandy Mike, the isolated lifestyles of the area residents, and her concern for Johnny and his well-being.

The truth about Dreyer's murder is as unexpected as it is shocking; the killer is as unlikely as it gets. A GRAVE DENIED is well-crafted with a straightforward and interesting plot and a number of great characters, most notably Shugak. In many ways, the story is also about the setting --- the glorious Alaskan wilderness and the fascinating people who live there. Dana Stabenow's sense of place and respect for Alaska and its citizens is obvious.

Basically this a good old-fashioned murder mystery, with a carefully rendered atmosphere, several suspects, a corpse no one knows much about and an awesome protagonist, who is trying to live her life the best she can while exploring a horrible death. This is crime fiction with requisite twists and turns but it is far from ordinary. A GRAVE DENIED is a mystery worth spending time in.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

Dana Stabenow's A Grave Denied proves to be a highly entertaining and intriguing murder mystery novel. The author who lives in Alaska, gives the story a great Alaskan flavor as her story unfold about a man who everyone knows but didn't know, was found murdered with a shotgun blast into his chest. Stabenow's heroine, Kate Shugak seek out this mystery while dodging some blows herself.

Since this book is part of the Kate Shugak series, the characters in the book were already established and set-up was pretty easy. The author moves the story well at a good pace and its a definite page turner. The book is a quick read. Well written, prose is good and mystery keep you going until the very end.

Overall, a pretty good murder mystery novel with a great Alaskan flavor.

(Trivial Stuff: If Kate Shugak really wanted to rebuilt her library, she would definitely go to Title Wave Used Books instead of Twice Told Used Bookstore. Also, initial suspects are house in Anchorage Jail instead of Cook Inlet Pre-Trial Facility.)

Loved, loved, loved this book, unlike some of the prudes who have reviewed it previously. I did not find it offensive at all, and the story was a crackling good mystery, one which I did not guess the solution to until almost the end, ( although I had my suspicions.) Very well done, and highly recommended.

Fans of Kate Shugak will love this entry into the wonderful series about a hard-bitten Alaskan woman and her wonder-dog, half-wolf, half-husky, Mutt.

In this outing, a group of schoolchildren on a field trip to view a glacier (only in Alaska!) stumbles upon a dead body hidden in a cave that should have been covered by ice. But the murderer miscalculated the movements of the glacier, and Park handyman Len Dwyer's remains are all too visible.

Now comes the question: Who killed Len and why? Almost everyone in the Park, including Kate, had used his services during the past year; he was an excellent all-around handyman, quiet, pleasant, and no trouble to anyone. Or was he?

Hunky trooper Jim Chopin, whose romance with Kate heats up a great deal in this book, is out to solve the mystery while trying to keep Kate out of it. Fat chance.

All our favorite Park Rats are in this book, from Bobby and Dinah (and the unwelcome addition of Bobby's horrible racist brother from Tennessee) to Auntie Vi and the other formidable aunties to Dandy Jim, the Park lothario.

Read and enjoy!

As he lay dying in his lover's arms, Jack Morgan made Kate Shugak promise to look after his son Johnny and to protect him from his mother. Since he wants to homestead with her in Alaska's National Park, Kate takes Johnny into her home and the residents of the park conspire with her to keep him hidden from his mother and outside authorities. Unfortunately nobody can protect Johnny or his classmates from seeing the body of a murdered man.

The homicide victim is Len Dreyer, who supported himself by doing construction and handyman jobs for the local residents. State Trooper Jim Chopin is in the middle of a crime wave so he asks Kate to learn if the victim had any enemies. She finds nobody really knew the man who left no paper trail for her to follow but her questions lead someone to burning down her log cabin, thinking she is in it. This case becomes very personal for Kate and she is determined to track down the killer or die trying.

This is one of the most successful, dynamic and refreshing mystery series of the last decade. The characters evolve, change and grow so that they remain unpredictable. A GRAVE DENIED is an exciting who-done-it because nobody will guess who the killer is until the author chooses to reveal his identity in a shocking climax. It is heartwarming to see the homesteaders rally around Kate in her time of troubles and says much about the goodness in most people's heart. This novel is must reading for anyone who likes an emotional, heart wrenching and dramatic relationship drama wrapped around a mystery.

Harriet Klausner