A Night Too Dark (Kate Shugak Series #17)
A Night Too Dark is New York Times bestselling writer Dana Stabenow’s latest, the seventeenth in a series chronicling life, death, love, tragedy, mischief, controversy, nature, and survival in Alaska, America’s last real frontier.\ In Alaska, people disappear every day. In Aleut detective Kate Shugak’s Park, they’ve been disappearing a lot lately. Hikers head into the wilderness unprepared and get lost. Miners quit without notice at the busy Suulutaq Mine. Suicides leave farewell notes and...
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The seventeenth book in a series chronicling life, death, love, tragedy, mischief, controversy, nature, and survival in Alaska.The Washington Post - Patrick AndersonThis plot unfolds nicely, but what makes the novel outstanding is Stabenow's vivid portrait of the Alaskan culture…Stabenow is blessed with a rich prose style and a fine eye for detail.
Gold.\ Number 79 on the periodic table, Au. From the Latin, aurum.\ The most precious and prized of metals, used for currency beginning with the Egyptian pharaohs in 2,700 B.C. and down through the ages by all nations as the metal of choice in the manufacture of those coins of highest value, like the aureus, the solidus, the ducat, the guilder, the sovereign, the double eagle, the Krugerrand. A malleable and forgiving metal, an ounce of pure gold can be beaten into a sheet large enough to gild the roof of a small home, although it is denser than lead. It doesn’t corrode, which makes it perfect for jewelry, although in its pure state it is too soft to stand up to repeated use and so is alloyed with other metals—copper, silver, nickel, or palladium—so that a wedding ring will last through a golden anniversary.\ Gold is tasteless, although in the 1500s a Dutchman invented a liqueur called Goldwasser in which he sprinkled gold . akes. Medieval chefs used gold to garnish sweets before sending them up to the high tables.\ Gold is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, and resistant to oxidation and corrosion, making it useful in electronics and dentistry. It was used to plate the copper disk of recorded greetings on board Voyager 1, a hundred astronomical units out and counting. It is included in speculative designs for solar sails for spaceships and solar collectors for space habitats. Scientists have built gold nanospheres to work with lasers on a cure for cancer.\ Gold is rare. Of all the noble metals, only mercury is more infrequently found in the earth’s crust.\ Mythological gold is as seductive as gold manifest. Midas asked Dionysus for the gift of turning everything to gold with his touch, only to discover a mixed blessing when gold food and drink proved to be indigestible. Jason’s .eece, Kidd’s trea sure, Pizarro’s El Dorado, Sutter’s Mill, Siwash George’s Rabbit Creek, Yamashita’s Buddha—in any reality, in any century gold enthralls, enchants, intoxicates, and is the downfall of many an otherwise sensible man and woman who succumb to its siren song.\ Gold.\ At last report, $940.48 per troy ounce on the world market. . . .\ Excerpted from A Night Too Dark by Dana Stabenow.\ Copyright © 2010 by Dana Stabenow.\ Published in January 2010 by St. Martin's Press.\ All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.
\ From the PublisherPraise for Whisper to the Blood\ “Grade: A. Some of the greatest mystery writers enrich us with their wonderful sense of place. Stabenow is one of them: Alaska’s answer to Tony Hillerman, she brings us the sights and sounds that few visitors will ever know. . . . If you haven’t discovered Stabenow yet, start here—then go back to A Cold Day for Murder and enjoy the whole story.”\ —Rocky Mountain News\ “Excellent . . . No one writes more vividly about the hardships and rewards of living in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness and the hardy but frequently flawed characters who choose to call it home. This is a richly rewarding regional series that continues to grow in power as it grows in length.”\ —Publishers Weekly (starred review)\ “There are now sixteen Kate Shugak novels in this excellent series set in backwoods Alaska, and rather than losing steam, Stabenow is building it. Whisper to the Blood is the best Shugak so far. . . . Stabenow is terrific at building a story and keeping the suspense tight and the story moving.”\ —The Globe and Mail\ “One of the best . . . A dynamite combination of atmosphere, action, and character.”\ —Booklist (starred review)\ Praise for A Deeper Sleep\ “When I’m casting about for an antidote to the sugary female sleuths . . . Kate Shugak, the Aleut private investigator in Dana Stabenow’s Alaskan mysteries, invariably comes to mind.”\ —The New York Times\ “Stabenow once again presents us with a cleverly conceived and crisply written thriller that provides a provocative glimpse of life as it is lived and justice as it is served on America’s last frontier.”\ —The San Diego Union-Tribune\ \ \ \ \ \ Patrick AndersonThis plot unfolds nicely, but what makes the novel outstanding is Stabenow's vivid portrait of the Alaskan culture…Stabenow is blessed with a rich prose style and a fine eye for detail.\ —The Washington Post\ \ \ Publishers WeeklyBestseller Stabenow deftly explores the environmental and economic impact of gold mining in her sizzling 17th novel to feature Alaska PI Kate Shugak (after 2009's Whisper to the Blood). Global Harvest Resources is intent on opening the Suulutaq Mine, where substantial deposits of gold, copper, and molybdenum have been found on state leases in the middle of the Iqaluk Wildlife Refuge, 50 miles from Niniltna. When Kate, “chair of the board of directors of the Niniltna Native Association,” and state trooper Jim Chopin find bear-eaten human remains near the truck of Global Harvest roustabout Dewayne A. Gammons, they assume the remains are Gammons's. After all, there was a suicide note in Gammons's truck. Weeks later, a wounded and nearly catatonic Gammons emerges from the woods near Kate's homestead. More puzzles—and murder—follow. An uneasy resolution to the crimes suggests further drama ahead for Kate and her fellow “Park rats.” Author tour. (Feb.)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalAs a controversial gold mine prepares to open in the Iqaluk Wildlife Refuge, an employee leaves a suicide note and disappears into the wilderness. When a search party finds bear-eaten human remains, the body is assumed to be the missing miner. Kate Shugak is at a loss when the man stumbles out of the woods some weeks later. Now she must identify the body. VERDICT Mixing the economic, political, and environmental impact of a gold mine on the beautiful Alaskan landscape with Kate's private life and her unacknowledged opposition to the mine makes the 17th Kate Shugak novel (after Whisper to the Blood) a page-turner. Readers of Stan Jones's Alaskan mysteries will appreciate Stabenow's portrayal of the state. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 10/1/09; available as an audio CD.]\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsThink of gold, lots of gold. Global Harvest Resources Inc. has discovered 42 million ounces of everyone's favorite metal at the Suulutaq Mine, on state leases smack in the middle of Alaska's Iqaluk Wildlife Refuge. Eager to assay even more, mine superintendent Vern Truax brings in a staff of dozens who work for a week, then head for a week off in the nearest town-Niniltna, 100 miles away-to drink, flirt and buy souvenirs. A suicidally inclined few opt for an unarmed stroll in the park, courting "death by Alaska" (aka, getting mauled by a bear or moose). When bits of a body duly turn up, investigator Kate Shugak (Whisper in the Blood, 2008, etc.) heads for the mine to see if anyone is missing and learns that Dewayne Gammons has been a no-show for a week. Despite niggling doubts, Kate writes him off as a suicide. When Gammons drags himself into Kate's yard a month later, the cute Aleut has to reconsider. First, who was the bear's real meal? Second, why has Gammons' friend Lydia, another mine employee, also turned up dead? And third, how are the two fatalities connected to State Trooper Jim Chopin's search for a bigamist, or to an industrial spy serving three paymasters, each craving proprietary information concerning the Suulutaq Mine?Kate, still unhappily serving as the chair of the Niniltna Native Association, is even unhappier about cell phones, moneyed tourists and other encroaching changes to the Alaskan lifestyle, not to mention the greed that accelerates them.\ \
