A Night Too Dark (Kate Shugak Series #17)

by Dana Stabenow

Overview

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 vanish.

Not only are Park rats disappearing at an alarming rate, but so is life in the Park as Kate knows it. Alaska state trooper Jim Chopin's workload has increased to where he doesn't make it home three nights out of four, the controversial mine has seduced Johnny and his classmates with summer jobs and divided the Niniltna Native Association—the aunties are to a woman selling out—and a hostile environmental activist organization has embraced the Suulutaq Mine as their reason for being.

It's almost a relief when Kate finds a body. This she can handle.

Until the identity of the body vanishes, too.

In this latest Kate Shugak novel, the smart, sexy PI, her wolf/husky hybrid Mutt, and Chopper Jim are only just beginning to realize the fallout from the discovery of the world's second-largest gold mine in their backyard. "Mine change everything," Auntie Vi said in Whisper to the Blood (the previous book in the series and the first to hit the New York Times bestseller list).

And it's only just beginning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429954860
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/16/2010
Series:	Kate Shugak Series , #17
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	119,896
File size:	481 KB

About the Author

Dana Stabenow is the New York Times bestselling author of the Kate Shugak mysteries and the Liam Campbell mysteries, as well as a few science fiction and thriller novels. Her book A Cold Day for Murder won an Edgar Award in 1994. Stabenow was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised on a 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She has a B.A. in journalism and an M.F.A. in writing from the University of Alaska. She has worked as an egg counter and bookkeeper for a seafood company, and worked on the TransAlaska pipeline before becoming a full-time writer. She continues to live in Alaska.

Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised on a 75-foot fishing tender. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and found it in writing. Her first book in the bestselling Kate Shugak series, A Cold Day for Murder, received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Follow Dana at stabenow.com

Read an Excerpt

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.

Editorial Reviews

This 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

Patrick Anderson

Bestseller 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.)

Publishers Weekly

As 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.]

Library Journal

Think 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.

Kirkus Reviews

Stabenow is blessed with a rich prose style and a fine eye for detail…It's an outstanding series and one that has, in fact, won awards and begun to turn up on bestseller lists here in the Lower 48. If you've never visited Alaska, it's also an intriguing introduction to that big, brawling, rather bewildering state.” —The Washington Post

“Stabenow deftly explores the environmental and economic impact of gold mining in her sizzling 17th novel to feature Alaska PI Kate Shugak.” —Publishers Weekly

“This finely evoked world of sod-roofed cabins and mining pre-fabs is still a place well worth visiting.” —The Houston Chronicle

“Kate Shugak, the Aleut private eye, demonstrates why she is considered one of the best among female sleuths in A Night Too Dark, the latest episode in Dana Stabenow's long-running Alaska-based series.” —San Diego Union-Tribune

“Kate Shugak's dark side is on display in Stabenow's 17th series novel… There isn't a stone left unturned as Stabenow exhumes old memories and new problems in a book taut with danger.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

From the Publisher

Alaskan P.I. Kate Shugak is expertly portrayed by Marguerite Gavin. Hikers in the local wildlife refuge and miners at the Suulutag gold mine are disappearing. The citizens of Niniltna, on the Kanuyaq River, are even more upset when a murder victim is found. Gavin finds unique vocal characterizations to keep listeners on track. Kate's sultry tones and State Trooper Jim Chopin's laid-back but businesslike characterization create good chemistry in this carefully paced mystery. Gavin also adds verisimilitude to the wilderness setting with her skillful pronunciation of Alaskan place names. Listeners will enjoy the twists of the mystery as well as the presentation. S.C.A. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

MAY 2010 - AudioFile