SL'ADE'S GLACIER

Alaskan melodrama with engaging humor (for the first half) and knockout description. WW II air-corps buddies Jack Slade and Sam Healey buy a surplus C-47 and settle down to making their fortune hauling freight around the Gulf of Alaska--but when a wild carcajou wolverine chews its way out of its air-freight box and causes the plane to crash-land 50 miles into the wild Blue Bear region, the stranded pilots find oil-soaked earth at the foot of a great glacier; befriended by Indian shaman Charlie Blue, they file a claim for the Carcajou Creek oil area. This new future becomes Jack's alone, however, when Sam kills a man in a drunken brawl and vamooses. And Jack acquires a mate. in Navy brat Josey Poole, with love and moose stew amid the wild landscapes; she even nurses Jack back to health (with help from Charlie Blue) when he is ravaged by a huge glacier bear (""I heard my head pop like a pecan in a nutcracker""). But then original partner Sam returns, claiming his oil rights and setting Jack up with a lodge and guide business. And, as 30 years pass, the conflict between oil rights and hunting grounds escalates: Sam brings in an Iranian millionaire who wants to fund the oil development: Jack is nearly killed; drilling begins; Josey dies in a bombed plane; and Jack's suicidal revenge is the novel's finale--as he mines the glacier and sends it crashing down onto the oil fields while standing on it. . . . Another larger-than-life action-melodrama--with rather more folksy likability than usual--from the author of Blood Sport and The Diamond Bogo.