At Taiga Lodge, George Perry's exclusive big-game hunting camp 125 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska, the price of admission has a unique flavor. "The charges depend on the customer's attitude," George tells Kate Shugak, who's working as one of his assistant guides. "The more they piss me off, the higher the price." Which means the party of German computer executives that Kate and her colleagues are looking after will be lucky to go home with any money at all. More interested in firing off their expensive guns than in the sport of hunting moose, these guys are a danger to themselves and anyone else within range. But when human bodies start to outnumber moose-head trophies, the resourceful Aleut Indian Kate realizes that the deaths have more to do with financial and moral crimes back home in Germany than accidents in Alaska.
Hunter's Moon, Dana Stabenow's ninth installment in the excellent Kate Shugak series, is enriched with the intricate details of everyday Alaskan life. The author follows the lives of ordinary people as they try to survive the harshly majestic environment as best they can. She shows how people can be tempered and improved by the rugged country, or bent by it to the breaking point. Kate herself might occasionally acquire the mythic proportions of a fictional heroine, but she also embodies the pain and human frailty that make her instantly recognizable as one of us, no matter where we live. --Dick Adler
From Publishers Weekly
Come along on a hunting trip from hell in the harrowing ninth entry of Stabenow's (Killing Grounds) Edgar Award-winning series set in the Alaskan bush. It's autumn in the foothills of the Alaska Range, bear and moose season. Kate Shugak and four other bush residentsAincluding her lover, Jack MorganAhave signed on to guide big-game hunters. But the Alaskan guides respect the land and hunt primarily for meat, placing them at odds with their clients, who are usually more interested in bagging trophies to hang on their walls. George Perry, the pilot who runs Taiga Lodge ("taiga" is Athabascan for bear shit), doesn't like tourists any more than Kate does, but the money and the meat from the four weeks of hunting help them all survive the winter. Their latest party of hunters is worse than usualAa group of arrogant, rapacious German executives who blast Wagner on their boom box, expect everyone to wait on them and carry a mini-arsenal of expensive weapons. When one of them accidentally shoots his own personal assistant, Kate and the rest chalk it up to inexperience and tragic luck. Then another death occurs, and the guides begin to get suspicious; but they fail to recognize what these Germans are really hunting for until it's too late. Gripping and adrenaline-charged, punctuated with extreme violence, both natural and man-made, the plot gives its due to Ten Little Indians and "The Most Dangerous Game," but adds some surprising twistsAall delivered with Stabenow's razor-sharp suspense and gritty prose. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
Amazon.com Review
At Taiga Lodge, George Perry's exclusive big-game hunting camp 125 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska, the price of admission has a unique flavor. "The charges depend on the customer's attitude," George tells Kate Shugak, who's working as one of his assistant guides. "The more they piss me off, the higher the price." Which means the party of German computer executives that Kate and her colleagues are looking after will be lucky to go home with any money at all. More interested in firing off their expensive guns than in the sport of hunting moose, these guys are a danger to themselves and anyone else within range. But when human bodies start to outnumber moose-head trophies, the resourceful Aleut Indian Kate realizes that the deaths have more to do with financial and moral crimes back home in Germany than accidents in Alaska.
Hunter's Moon, Dana Stabenow's ninth installment in the excellent Kate Shugak series, is enriched with the intricate details of everyday Alaskan life. The author follows the lives of ordinary people as they try to survive the harshly majestic environment as best they can. She shows how people can be tempered and improved by the rugged country, or bent by it to the breaking point. Kate herself might occasionally acquire the mythic proportions of a fictional heroine, but she also embodies the pain and human frailty that make her instantly recognizable as one of us, no matter where we live. --Dick Adler
From Publishers Weekly
Come along on a hunting trip from hell in the harrowing ninth entry of Stabenow's (Killing Grounds) Edgar Award-winning series set in the Alaskan bush. It's autumn in the foothills of the Alaska Range, bear and moose season. Kate Shugak and four other bush residentsAincluding her lover, Jack MorganAhave signed on to guide big-game hunters. But the Alaskan guides respect the land and hunt primarily for meat, placing them at odds with their clients, who are usually more interested in bagging trophies to hang on their walls. George Perry, the pilot who runs Taiga Lodge ("taiga" is Athabascan for bear shit), doesn't like tourists any more than Kate does, but the money and the meat from the four weeks of hunting help them all survive the winter. Their latest party of hunters is worse than usualAa group of arrogant, rapacious German executives who blast Wagner on their boom box, expect everyone to wait on them and carry a mini-arsenal of expensive weapons. When one of them accidentally shoots his own personal assistant, Kate and the rest chalk it up to inexperience and tragic luck. Then another death occurs, and the guides begin to get suspicious; but they fail to recognize what these Germans are really hunting for until it's too late. Gripping and adrenaline-charged, punctuated with extreme violence, both natural and man-made, the plot gives its due to Ten Little Indians and "The Most Dangerous Game," but adds some surprising twistsAall delivered with Stabenow's razor-sharp suspense and gritty prose.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.