Midnight Come Again by Dana Stabenow

First, Mutt is alive and well - and a good thing, because if she hadn't been I would probably have had to give this series up.

In the previous nine Kate Shugak books, Jim Chopin was drawn in as essentially a cartoon character. He is bigger, and more handsome than most men. His uniform and heliocopter sparkle with "more than oriental splendor." He is known as "the father of the park" for the number of dark-haired, dark-eyed girls who have fair-haired, blue-eyed babies. He is the classic laconic western lawman whose very presence causes fully adult grizzly bears to cower and slink away. He is called by all and sundry Chopper Jim, in clever play on his name and his usual mode of travel.

Now having done away with Jack, a more or less rounded character, who except for his mindless obsession with Kate, has a life and problems and a vague touch of reality, Stabenow, rather than creating a new brooding, perverse character to interact with Kate, has decided to promote Chopper Jim to personhood. I think actually she has created a new character, but she is hanging the new character in the general framework of Chopper Jim. We see things from his point of view; we actually spend more time with him than with Kate in this story. He has become obsessed with Kate now that Jack is out of the way - to the extent that he is no longer interested in casual sex. Now that is enough to make it clear that he is a different character.

The main action takes place outside the park, in Bering. The mystery plot is Russian Mafia. The background story plot is Kate's recovery. And for the second time, Stabenow leaves us with a hook into the next book. Last time she dropped us with Kate holding Jack's body and Mutt at the point of death at their side. This time she returns to the park to find Jack's son, Johnny, at her homestead.

It's okay, I guess. But that sort of trick always seems to me to speak of insecurity. The author isn't sure that the reader will return unless she leaves him with an unanswered question. Perhaps she caught a lot of flack for killing Jack - that could account for it.

In the last book, Hunter's Moon, the chapters were headed by quotations out of the chapter itself. I think this was the first time that she has done chapter headings. In one case, the purpose was clearly to mislead the reader. The quote was "I thought you were dead." The reader then hangs on to that when Jack is killed thinking that somehow he is saved after all, but it is actually one of the bads speaking to Kate herself. In this book she uses quotes from a native American poet, including the one that Jack quoted to Kate about "Light bright shining." It was an interesting transition. I'll be watching for them in the future.