A Cold-Blooded Business by Dana Stabenow

Reading these from the beginning has been informative. Many series mystery writers have a theme (or two) which runs through the entire series. Nevada Barr, of course, "does" national parks. Those goofy ghost mysteries by Jaffarian, not only has the ghosts, but a sort of "treasures of California tourism" thing going - of course, those are blatantly "cozy" and themes are on my list of basic elements defining cozy mysteries. The Julia Spencer-Fleming books, which I have pretty well decided are not cozy, have the gloom and doom hymns quoted at the front (in Kindle you have to back up from where they start you to get to them) from which the titles arise. So far in the Henning Mankell books that I have been reading there is some sort of international connection - as if these grusome crimes couldn't possibly be of Swedish origin. Stieg Larsson promoted no such illusion.

All of that just to say that, as far as I can determine, Stabenow is a native Alaskan, but not a Native Alaskan, but her running focus is Native Alaskan, in particular Aleut heritage, culture, and tradition. Perhaps related, we are also seeing quite a bit of Alaska itself. Enough to make me curious, but not quite enough to make me want to pack up and move there.

This book is set at the Prudhoe Bay site of oil drilling operations. The scale and scope of that operation is far beyond anything I ever imagined. Huge areas, hundreds of employees - from the expected roughnecks and computer operations specialists to maids and gourmet chefs, not to mention PR and Security. The story, as the last one, centers around drugs. This time the question is who is supplying the (imaginary) oil company staff with cocaine, so Kate goes undercover again, this time as a roustabout - which apparently in this context means "one who does whatever else needs doing." For the most part, Kate works as the driver of a tour bus for the PR person who does guided tours for all the visiting politicians and other VIPs, foreign and domestic.

This is two in a row where Kate has been out there without the assistance of Mutt. Mutt did have her puppies, between the previous book and the one before - they were boarded out while Kate was on the crab boat, this time apparently Mutt boarded with Jack in Anchorage. Stabenow does not portray Anchorage as the garden spot of Alaska, or anywhere else. Although Dutch Harbor is rougher and dirtier, I'm thinking she described it with more affection than the "big city." Anchorage is also the scene of one of Kate's encounters with the fate of Native Alaskans. She meets an old man, homeless and begging, and we learn some sad lessons about the disintegration of tribal life.

The bads in these books really think up some creative ways to try to kill Kate, in this book they could have just knocked her in the head a little harder and gotten it done. In the last one, pretty much the same. But, fortunately for the series (this is only number five of fifteen or thereabouts), the bad guys aren't all that bright.