A Cold Day for Murder (Kate Shugak Novels)

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.

Having spent two weeks in Alaska last summer, I thought I would give this author a try since she was recommended on this board. What a find! Kate Shugak is very solitary and strong. The mystery kept me riveted and guessing. Very unusual. Glad I began at the first in the series. Hope most of the characters show up in the following books. A fast and exciting read.

I had polished off Nevada Barr, & Van Gieson and was searching for a new author. Amazon.com suggested that if I liked the above authors I would like Stabenow so I acquired this, the 1st in the series. Now I'm hooked. I find the characters eccentric and interesting enough to keep me reading. Given that the setting is Alaska, I don't find the characters as eccentric as they might seem stateside. I will continue until I've finished the series.

Love the development of the main character, Kate Shugak, over the 17 years that Stabenow has been writing them. My all time favorite is the one I read first, "Breakup." Who knew Alaska had such interesting people.

Not only great storytelling, but a lovely window into Aleut culture and life in the far north wilderness. Kate is an inspiring force of courage, smarts, and indomitable spirit, and when in doubt seeks advice from her "aunties'" quilting circle. I've read the whole Shugak series over the years, and decided to do it again!

Language alert

I really wanted to like this book. I really did. I've actually been dying to go to Alaska (and hopefully realistically will next year!) so I was extremely interested in reading a mystery that took place there. I had also been introduced to this series when I won the 18th book in this series on a GoodReads giveaway (whoops, didn't know it was the 18th when I entered...), so I came back to the first. Sadly, I will not even come close to reading the 18th.

For the first half of the book if not more, I mostly found myself confused on what was happening and who characters were. I figured out Mark Miller mostly right off, but there Jack and Ken (even still I keep forgetting his name was Ken) were introduced at the same time and although obviously Ken was the missing one, I had trouble sorting out Kate's relationship with each man. I think I've got it right when I say that she brought Ken around the family a couple times and was casually seeing him before he went missing and Jack was her former boss and more serious flame from further back. I didn't feel like a lot of that was explained well.

I almost felt for a lot of the explanations and character descriptions, I was expected to know what the picture was in the author's head and somehow I just really got mixed up on most things. Like, we introduce you to this guy and he and Kate talk for a while, but oh wait, he's in a wheelchair (yes, I went back and read to make sure I didn't miss it in the first description and there was a hint at it, but how was I to know "chair" implied "wheelchair"?) . There were other characters this happened with too just with physical descriptions. Whenever I read, somehow my mind comes up with a specific picture for how each character looks and I see the book in my head as I read. If there's a notable physical characteristic, whether it be eye color, skin color, stance, hair, height -- I need to know it so I can picture the character right! I just felt so off with most of the characters that it really distracted me. I actually felt like I was left to infer a lot of things just before they were revealed. Sure, that gives me more to think about, maybe add more depth to the book, but again, that was just something that threw me off.

Also, I felt like there were a ton of descriptions not only of a picturesque view of Alaska, but also a lot of history behind it. Seeing as how I am not a fan of history (I actually actively dislike it), the lengthy descriptions of history thew me off a lot. I've never been a history buff because I could never connect with dates and times and names. I connect with descriptions and geography.

Overall, maybe this book just wasn't for me! It was certainly a different type of mystery novel, and I really wasn't keen on the mystery at all until it was all revealed until the end. Then it kind of wrapped up the book and it was really interesting in the end. It was not a place I thought they were going to go. I felt like all of the options for a suspect had been cleared until you realize what Kate had discovered and when she puts her clues together, it's quite a shock for the reader! The end of the book I feel really redeemed the beginning for me, but still not enough to continue the series.

This was the most poorly written book I've ever tried to read. Boring with a capitol "B". I didn't even finish it.

On the one hand, a great whodunit placed in a fascinating setting (the far Alaska north) by a writer who really knows her stuff. (The writer, Dana Stabenow, lives in Alaska and it shows). On the other hand, the novel had such a gloom and doom atmosphere, it left me very much depressed after I had finished it. Oh well, maybe that is a sign of good writing; intentional or not, it's a darn good read anyway.

Kate Shugak, the heroine of this novel, is a traumatized ex-investigator of the Anchorage D.A.'s office, who gets - against her will, with a lot of arm-twisting - called upon to investigate the disappearance of two men because she knows the area (and its eccentric people) like the back of her hand. She also knows she's not going to like the answers to this mystery - and boy, is she right (but I'll leave that to the reader to find out).

In between, we meet up with a lot of fascinating, larger-than-life characters that seem to have stepped straight out of Northern Exposure. It does have enough humor in it to put a smile upon your face now and then (just visit the Roadhouse to see what I mean). Alaska is cold, rugged and dangerous, deadly to the unwary, so a sense of humor seems one of the required survival-traits to live there.