Breakup

June 2, 1997
Early spring in Alaska is breakup season: the temperature rises, animals and humans come out of hibernation and the state "melts into a 586,412-square mile pile of slush." This book describes breakup in detail, but if you're looking for a competent Kate Shugak detective story, give it a miss. Stabenow, returning to the milieu of A Fatal Thaw (1992), offers too many picturesque breakup stories and not enough mystery. In an exciting beginning, a jet engine falls out of the sky and smashes into Kate's isolated cabin in the national park, bearing a body in the wreckage. Later, Kate, an Aleut freelance investigator, finds a tourist killed by a bear. Eventually, she realizes that the deaths are related murders and, amidst the hurley-burley of breakup, identifies the culprit. In addition, the strongminded Kate is unwillingly pulled into tribal politics as the Niniltna Native Association expects her to assume the leadership role of her late grandmother Ekaterina. Stabenow writes lively, intriguing descriptions of the magnificence of the Alaska wilderness, its quirky inhabitants and Aleut cultural traditions. But the mystery seems almost an afterthought in this disappointing entry in the Shugak series.