Play With Fire A Kate Shugak Mystery) [Hardcover]

Dana Stabenow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1995

Detective Kate Shugak's discovery of a decomposed body in a burned Alaskan woods leads her to a cultic community where outsiders are not welcome. By the Edgar Award-winning author of A Cold Day for Murder.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The crisp crunch of snow gives way to mosquitos and mushrooms as both cold weather-loving Kate Shugak and her latest adventure wilt in the warmth of an Alaskan June. Kate and photojournalist Dinah Cookman are harvesting forest mushrooms when they discover a naked, much-decomposed corpse and call in a trooper, who says that no one within 100 miles has been reported missing in the last year. But then the grandson of the local Bible-thumping preacher asks Kate to find his missing father, Daniel. The corpse is identified as the boy's father's and, while the police suspect no foul play, Kate wonders how the man died. Few share her curiosity: the boy asks her to stop investigating, and other locals answer her questions evasively. Then a gang of thugs wrecks her camp and injures Dinah. Even readers sympathetic to Stabenow's (A Cold-Blooded Business) plot-linked message on religious intolerance will struggle with the crudely inserted mushroom lore and other extraneous material that doesn't even yield a credible red herring. Maybe the likable Kate will perk up again when the temperature plummets. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

While picking morels in an area recently burned by forest fire, series protagonist Kate Shugak (A Cold Day for Murder, Berkeley, 1992) discovers a body covered in ashes and mushrooms. Attempts to identify the man coincide with Shugak's search for a local boy's missing father-a teacher ostracized by his father's Jerry Falwell-type community. As in previous titles, Stabenow utilizes police procedural connections via Alaskan troopers, endows her writing with admirable sensory desciptions of flora and fauna, and provides unusual settings for her deceptively simple plot. A fine selection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 282 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Hardcover; 1st edition (April 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425147177
• ISBN-13: 978-0425147177
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #619,371 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

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More musings than mystery, October 3, 2001

By 

Carol Peterson Hennekens (Colorado Springs, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Play With Fire (Audio Cassette)

I'm a big fan of the Kate Shugak series and thought Hunter's Moon was one of the best page turners in a long while. It inspired me to go back to some of her earlier novels. The good news is that Stabenow gets better with time. The bad news is that some of the early stuff is pretty weak. The basic problem with this book is that there isn't much mystery. A man goes missing for ten months and no one reports it? When found, his body is naked and he's died from mosquito bites. He's the son of the local fundamentalist minister. 300 pages later we find out who killed him.

The basic problem with this book is that for every page that moves the plot forward, Stabenow includes ten essentially irrelevant pages. The ramblings range from entertaining (does musak justify homicide?) to tedious (an encyclopedia excerpt on mushrooms) to touching (Kate's memories of going to college). There's much discussion on religion and education. These are two topics of interest to me so I didn't mind that they were mostly off topic. Other readers may be justifiably less tolerant.

Bottom-line: Many musings and not much mystery. Stabenow can do(and has done)better.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too Much Preaching; Too Little Mystery, September 6, 2001

By 

Susan R. Cakars "sanpablos" (San Pablo, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Play with Fire (Kate Shugak Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

In this book, Kate Shugak finds a body while picking mushrooms. It turns out to be the body of a person who has been missing for quite awhile, but whose father never reported him missing.
Kate is always arrogant with her beliefs, but this book really goes too far. I fully agree with Dana Stabenow's views on religious fundamental extremists. However, she goes too far when she starts trashing all religion and people who believe in them.
I really liked Kate's remembrances of her first year of college and of the professor who turned her on to literature. But none of this makes up for all her preaching against religion, people from other states, people who listen to different music, etc.
The mystery itself is unsatisfying, too. I agree with the other reviewer who lamented the lack of suspects, red herrings, etc.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Try another of her books, November 22, 2000

By 

Marilyn Domer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Play with Fire (Kate Shugak Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

Dana Stabenow writes good mysteries so this book was a surprising disappointment. There is no mystery, barely even an attempt to write one. There is only one suspect, a group of people the author doesn't like, and that's who did it. No red herrings, no other suspects. What kind of a mystery is that? If you do read it, be prepared to be beaten over the head with the author's prejudices on nearly every page. Skip this book and read some of her actual mysteries. I've read four others so far and liked them all.