Hunter's Moon (Kate Shugak Mystery) [Mass Market Paperback]

Dana Stabenow (Author)

Book Description

Series: Kate Shugak Mystery | Publication Date: December 1, 1999

A corporate hunting retreat turns into a deadly game of cat and mouse in this latest addition to the Kate Shugak series.

"With eight Shugak mysteries under her belt, Stabenow is rapidly emerging as one of the strongest voices in crime fiction in the vast expanse of Alaska," wrote The Seattle Times of last year's Killing Grounds. With Hunter's Moon, the unstoppable Kate Shugak guides a hunting expedition gone horribly wrong.

It's September and the height of hunting season in the bush. Experienced hunter Kate and her boyfriend, Jack, volunteer to help out their friend and big-game outfitter George Perry with a hunting trip. But while they kill to pack their freezers, this wealthy group of German computer executives wants trophies to hang on their walls. The conflict of interest doesn't end there; used to pampering, the group has a style that clashes with Kate's self-sufficient ways.

After successfully bagging a moose with two of her charges, Kate returns to camp to learn that a hunter has been shot. It appears to be an accident, until the body of a second hunter is discovered in even more gruesome circumstances. With no shortage of potential suspects, Kate realizes the moose and the bears aren't the only animals being hunted in the bush.

In a plot that combines elements of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game, in a setting as perilous as it is beautiful, with a cast of characters as rich and full as any in detective fiction today, Dana Stabenow weaves a story that will test the limits of Kate's strength, ingenuity, and determination, and will ultimately change the course of her life forever.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At Taiga Lodge, George Perry's exclusive big-game hunting camp 125 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska, the price of admission has a unique flavor. "The charges depend on the customer's attitude," George tells Kate Shugak, who's working as one of his assistant guides. "The more they piss me off, the higher the price." Which means the party of German computer executives that Kate and her colleagues are looking after will be lucky to go home with any money at all. More interested in firing off their expensive guns than in the sport of hunting moose, these guys are a danger to themselves and anyone else within range. But when human bodies start to outnumber moose-head trophies, the resourceful Aleut Indian Kate realizes that the deaths have more to do with financial and moral crimes back home in Germany than accidents in Alaska.

Hunter's Moon, Dana Stabenow's ninth installment in the excellent Kate Shugak series, is enriched with the intricate details of everyday Alaskan life. The author follows the lives of ordinary people as they try to survive the harshly majestic environment as best they can. She shows how people can be tempered and improved by the rugged country, or bent by it to the breaking point. Kate herself might occasionally acquire the mythic proportions of a fictional heroine, but she also embodies the pain and human frailty that make her instantly recognizable as one of us, no matter where we live. --Dick Adler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Come along on a hunting trip from hell in the harrowing ninth entry of Stabenow's (Killing Grounds) Edgar Award-winning series set in the Alaskan bush. It's autumn in the foothills of the Alaska Range, bear and moose season. Kate Shugak and four other bush residentsAincluding her lover, Jack MorganAhave signed on to guide big-game hunters. But the Alaskan guides respect the land and hunt primarily for meat, placing them at odds with their clients, who are usually more interested in bagging trophies to hang on their walls. George Perry, the pilot who runs Taiga Lodge ("taiga" is Athabascan for bear shit), doesn't like tourists any more than Kate does, but the money and the meat from the four weeks of hunting help them all survive the winter. Their latest party of hunters is worse than usualAa group of arrogant, rapacious German executives who blast Wagner on their boom box, expect everyone to wait on them and carry a mini-arsenal of expensive weapons. When one of them accidentally shoots his own personal assistant, Kate and the rest chalk it up to inexperience and tragic luck. Then another death occurs, and the guides begin to get suspicious; but they fail to recognize what these Germans are really hunting for until it's too late. Gripping and adrenaline-charged, punctuated with extreme violence, both natural and man-made, the plot gives its due to Ten Little Indians and "The Most Dangerous Game," but adds some surprising twistsAall delivered with Stabenow's razor-sharp suspense and gritty prose.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (December 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425172597
• ISBN-13: 978-0425172599
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #277,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage and raised on 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska.  She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and found it in writing. 

Her first science fiction novel, Second Star, sank without a trace (but has since been resurrected as an e-book), her first crime fiction novel, A Cold Day for Murder, won an Edgar award, her first thriller, Blindfold Game, hit the New York Times bestseller list, and her twenty-eighth novel and nineteenth Kate Shugak novel, Restless in the Grave, comes out February 14, 2012.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely the Best So Far, July 13, 2004

By 

Wendy Kaplan (Houston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hunter's Moon (Kate Shugak Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

Thanks to a number of reviewers who took it upon themselves to reveal the last 50 pages of this book in spoiler upon spoiler, I already knew that a great tragedy was to come upon Kate Shugak somewhere along in Hunter's Moon.

But even knowing that, I was totally unprepared for the grief that overtook me as a reader; the sobs that tore me apart. For those of us who have followed Kate from the very first book, this story is almost unbearable in its suspense, its heart-pounding intensity, and its gut-wrenching ending. It brings the series to a whole new level, and if I never read another one in the series, I will always remember this book.

The story starts out simply enough: Kate and her lover Jack Morgan, along with Kate's trusty half-wolf, half-husky Mutt, join feisty Old Sam and others as hired guides to a party of largely tenderfoot hunters. They've done work like this before, and they know all the pitfalls of such an escorted hunting trip, but this group of paid participants is more obnoxious than the average amateur: The entire group is from a multinational computer software company headquartered in Germany, and each of the teutonic wilderness wannabees is more obnoxious than the next. Before the first shot moose is cold, there has been an accidental shooting of a human being. And that's only the beginning. It becomes clear in very short order that a mass murderer has signed along for the trip, and that nobody is safe.

As Kate and Jack rely on their wits and their wildnerness savvy to figure out who is doing the killing, the reader is increasingly afraid for their very existence.

This is an amazingly powerful book. I'm glad I read it, but I'm still crying as I write this review. Whew!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Hunter's Moon", March 12, 2000

By 

MacGeezer (Cleveland, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hunter's Moon (Kate Shugak Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

If you don't know the series don't start with this book! If you like the series you'll like this book, if you have any empathy for Kate Shugak it'll break your heart; slow starting with the appearance of a series "filler" book the last half is top notch with a very emotional ending that will give you a changed view of the series heroine.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I'm not sure I liked it...., May 20, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hunter's Moon (Kate Shugak Mysteries) (Hardcover)

I'm having a hard time with this one. After reading almost all the other Kate Shugak novels and enjoying this "Renaissance Woman", this one seemed pointless. A first-time reader would have a hard time figuring out what's going on, as there is no character development, and too many assumptions that her previous novels had been read. Kate's character has been complicated, trying to resolve her Native American heritage,her huge Native family, and "Bush" lifestyle with modern life that others take for granted. There was none of that is this book. Beautiful descriptions of Alaskan wilderness notwithstanding, I was left with a disquiet of pointless killing, and an ending that didn't satisfy.