Description:

Edgar Award winner Dana Stabenow has written nine atmospheric crime novels featuring the very prickly, very human Kate Shugak, but her novels also have a scene-stealing costar: Alaska, unforgiving, breathtaking, dangerous, and beautiful. Stabenow's evocation of this wilderness, combined with her talent for bringing characters to life and creating knuckle-whitening suspense, has made her "one of the strongest voices in crime fiction." (Seattle Times).

Now in Midnight Come Again, all these elements come together for Stabenow's most compelling Kate Shugak novel to date.

Kate, a former investigator for the Anchorage D.A. and now a P.I. for hire, is missing after a winter spent in mourning. Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin, Kate's best friend, needs her to help him work a new case. He discovers her hiding out in Bering, a small fishing village on Alaska's western coast, living and working under an assumed name-- working hard, as eighteen-hour workdays seem to be her only justification for getting up in the morning. But before they can even discuss Kate's last several months, or what Jim is doing looking for her in Bering, they're up to their eyes in Jim's case, which is suddenly more complicated-- and more dangerous-- than they suspected.

A magnificent crime novel about life in America's last wilderness, the heart-wrenching grief that goes with love, and murder, Midnight Come Again is Dana Stabenow's best novel to date.

Amazon.com Review

Aleutian PI Kate Shugak is hiding out in Bering, Alaska. Scarred, scared, and pretending to be someone else, she's trying to find a reason to go on living after the murder of her lover and her own close call with death (Hunter's Moon). Her self-imposed exile is threatened when Chopper Jim Chopin, a state trooper from her home village in the Bush, arrives in Bering with a new identity of his own. Tagging along are a couple of (barely) undercover FBI agents who think that criminals aboard a Russian fishing vessel docked in Bering's harbor are attempting to smuggle stolen plutonium into the United States to sell to terrorists. But Kate suspects that the Russians are involved in a very different game: laundering money through a local bank. To prove it, she enlists the help of an old college friend who happens to be the bank's chief teller. But getting the evidence costs Alice Chevak dearly; once again, Kate fears, she's brought death to someone she loves.

In this ninth outing for her popular series heroine, Dana Stabenow adds depth, texture, and vulnerability to Kate's inner life; reveals new aspects of Jim Chopin's character; and introduces Alice's daughter Stephanie, with whom Kate forges a bond of love and obligation that promises the youngster an ongoing role in future Kate Shugak's adventures. An expertly paced and plotted thriller with moody, moving undertones, Midnight Come Again will please the author's many fans and likely win her new ones too. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Kate's tough life took a tragic turn when her long-time lover, Jack Morgan, was killed in last year's Hunter's Moon. In this ninth entry in the award-winning series, a guilty, inconsolable Kate, impulsively leaving her Alaska bush home for a coastal fishing village, goes to work incognito for Baird Air, a cargo airline. At Baird, she soon runs into Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin, a friend who's on an undercover job for the FBI. This is only one of several plot-churning coincidences in an otherwise poignant and gripping novel featuring breathtaking descriptions of natural scenery and incisive depiction of Alaskan natives caught between traditional and modern cultures. The FBI thinks that Russian gangsters are using a fishing vessel to smuggle stolen plutonium to right-wing groups, with Baird Air the likely shipper. Two arrogant "Fibbies" get their comeuppance when Jim and Kate uncover a Russian money-laundering scheme aided by a venal Alaska state senator and a crooked banker. The book has an uneven pace, with the slow first half reflecting Kate's grief; as the investigation speeds up, so does the action. In a heart-stopping climax aboard a hijacked airplane, pilot Jim performs aerial stunts to forestall the Russians pushing Kate out the door. Stabenow's evocation of the Kuskokwim delta and its inhabitants is as artful as her portrayal of the Alaskan bush country. And Kate, finally coming to terms with Jack's death, befriends a determined 10-year-old girl whose intelligence and independence mirror her own. Let's hope she reappears in further Shugak adventures. Author tour. (May)
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