Saturday, February 19, 2011

A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow

See, a whole book on paper! Recommended by someone at school. I enjoyed it, even on paper. Didn't make me want to go to Alaska.

As suggested above, this is set in Alaska and the heroine/detective is an Aleut. The crimes here are definitely "frontier" crimes - things that happen where life is in the process of changing and the law is more of a suggestion than an imperative. A "them and us" crime prompted by the assault on the old ways by outsiders.

That said, I think in this story there wasn't sufficient evidence shared with the reader for me to be satisfied with the way Kate (Shugak, not Martinelli) springs the solution on us. Or maybe I was just having too much trouble with the print in a used mass market paperback. Anyway, it almost reminded me of the way that Agatha Christie's detectives would reveal the answer to admiring fans, although Agatha's parlor reveals were more comfortable than an abandoned mine in the middle of an Alaskan winter. I like Agatha's stuff - just every now and then I thought that she could have provided the reader with more hints about the direction that genius was taking.

I have a feeling that these may get better as the series goes on - and I think the rest of them are available electronically!

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