Breakup by Dana Stabenow

I know I said that I wouldn't say this again, but this is the only one of these that I had read before and it wasn't all that long ago. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it is somewhere back in this blog. I'm glad I didn't skip it because I had read it before. There are whole threads that make more sense with all the back story, and there are references to previous stories. Logically, all the minor threads that I am trying to note in these books meant nothing to me when I read it the first time and minor characters had much less significance, but knowing Kate a little better made a big difference, too. Obviously, the book held together well enough without all that, because I added the series to my list (at that point unwritten) of series worth a deeper look.

No one should complain of any of the books in this series that they are a little slow moving, or slow at the beginning, but this one takes "hit the ground running" to a whole new level - and never lets up.

Breakup - for those who never read a book of the frozen northern wastelands - is the advent of spring, specifically when the ice breaks up on the rivers. It is generally accepted that it is a time of insanity for everything living in the area. In just the first few pages, Kate goes down to check on the stability of the creek bank below her homestead (forgetting her shotgun) and encounters a full grown (and extremely cranky) mama grizzly. She manages to get back up the bank ahead of the bear who decides to take her babies to a better neighborhood. Before Kate's adrenalin has returned to a normal level, another bear, this time a young male (only about 300 pounds), has discovered her cache of frozen meat and is helping himself to a few roasts and steaks. She frightens him away, but in the process, he knocks the legs out from under her cache and all the meat falls on him (which assisted him in his decision to take off) only (and quite by accident) ripping her garage door off as he flees. That evening, while she is settled down to work on her taxes, a piece of a JT9 Bell&Howell jet engine falls through her roof and takes out her couch, which is a minor problem, since the rest of the engine fell in her front yard reducing her truck to a metal pancake - not to mention all the other bits which effectively destroyed everything else.

And that's only the beginning, they haven't even found the first body yet.

If Stabenow was trying to produce a story which gave outsiders a taste of the manic end of winter lunacy in a place where winter is long, tough, and very serious business, she has succeeded.