Breakup [Hardcover]

The Alaskan spring brings problems and new hope for Kate Shugak. She must investigate a murder near home even as she takes over the role of clan leader from her Aleut grandmother. A wonderful series.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"Breakup" is what Alaskans call their brief spring, when the state "melts into a 586,412-square-mile pile of slush." The seasonal change unhinges Alaskans just as Santa Ana winds unhinge Los Angelenos in Raymond Chandler's mysteries. Kate Shugak lives in the bush with Mutt, a wonderful husky-wolf mix, and is facing a terrible breakup. Her taxes are intractable; she has three encounters with grizzlies, two near misses with airplanes, and ends up in a handful of gunfights--and a corpse turns up near her homestead. This sixth entry in Stabenow's lively, entertaining series offers a tough, insightful heroine; a set of intriguing, slightly eccentric supporting characters; and a healthy dose of Alaskan atmosphere. Although the mystery element isn't even introduced until well into the story, Stabenow more than compensates with a detailed look at how Shugak and company deal with the effects of breakup: verve is important, but it helps to have Jimmy Buffet playing in the background. John Rowen

Spring has come to Kate Shugak's Alaskan park, and the snow is melting, along with every trace of social inhibition among the human and animal residents. Item: Kate has close encounters with two grizzlies in two separate incidents on the same day. Item: a 747 jet engine falls from a passing plane's cargo bay onto her spread, spreading it out just a little more. Item: the pointy- heads who arrive to survey the wreckage find a ripe corpse just beyond Kate's property line. Item: Kate, reluctantly taking her friend Mandy Baker's visiting Brahmin parents off Mandy's hands and on a tour of the park--she ends up landing a handsome fee for this service--shepherds them into still another grizzly attack, the discovery of another body, and (when they stop for a well- earned drink) a shooting feud between two families who just can't agree on a right-of-way for their neighboring homesteads. Still on tap is a disgruntled wife who takes her husband hostage and a Niniltna tribal council argument about whether the tribe ought to contract with a mental-health group for an on-site counselor. (By this time, you'll swear nobody ever needed one more.) It's no wonder that Kate is joined by every other important character in her seventh appearance (Blood Will Tell, 1996, etc.) in a rousing chorus of ``I hate breakup.'' Readers will find much more to like in this easygoing, farcical series of not-very-mysterious riffs--even though every separate plot seems like an afterthought, and the whole parcel a circus with Kate more bemused audience than ringmaster. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

6 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.