SO SURE OF DEATH

For such a backwater, Newenham, Alaska, sure is jumping. Now that State Trooper Liam Campbell’s comatose wife has finally died and Liam is free to pursue his romance with air-taxi owner Wyanet Chouinard, seven murders have come between them: the Malone family, father, mother, brother, two children, and two deckhands, all have been shot and set afire aboard their fishing boat, which was then scuttled and left to sink. As if that slaughter weren—t enough to keep Liam preoccupied, Wy has found a corpse of her own. Prof. Desmond McLynn’s gofer, Don Nelson, has been pinned by a native storyknife to McLynn’s excavation at Tulukaruk. So even though things ought to be looking up for Liam—the arrival of rookie Trooper Diana Prince has given the boss who broke him from sergeant and exiled him to Newenham (Fire and Ice, 1998) an excuse to promote him to corporal, and he and Wy are at least on speaking terms again—he’s spending most of his time with Wy getting flown from one crime scene to the next. Liam never doubts that the two suspects who fall handily into his lap, one for each crime, are guilty as hell, but veterans of Stabenow’s long-running Kate Shugak series (Hunter’s Moon, p. 492, etc.) will know better. Nonstop incident and matchless local color keep you from noticing that you don’t get to spend enough time with them to make the real perps as vivid as the Alaska scenery.