Description:

While deckhanding on a fishing boat, Kate Shugak hauls in the dead body of the most disliked fisherman around. Kate's search for the killer isn't making her too popular in town -- especially since he's biking hailed as the catch of the day...

Amazon.com Review

Like Nevada Barr, Dana Stabenow writes mysteries so firmly rooted in the natural world that their sense of place becomes a vital part of the plot. In this book about Native Alaskan crime solver Kate Shugak, the ocean and the men who fish it for salmon are described in such vivid detail that you'll never look at a salmon steak the same way again. When a particularly nasty fisherman is murdered, there's no end of suspects--including members of Kate's own family. The story also sports a richly ironic undertone of political incorrectness, as Kate muses about the forest rangers, "who wanted to annex every square foot of land they saw and keep it pristine and inviolate, unsullied by human hand. They failed to recall that the indigenous peoples who came across the Bering land bridge during the last Ice Age had their hands all over anything that had the remotest possibility of nutritional value, and were every bit as much of the landscape and the wheel of life as the fish and the birds and the mammals." Previous Shugak sorties in paperback include Breakup, Blood Will Tell, Play with Fire, and A Cold-Blooded Business.

From Publishers Weekly

In this gripping eighth appearance of former Anchorage, Alaska, investigator Kate Shugak, a fisherman is murdered, leaving almost as many suspects as fish in the ocean. Cal Meany was a cheat, a poacher, an abusive husband and father, an adulterer and an opportunist who disdains joining the fishermen's strike against the largest local wholesaler, which has drastically reduced the price it pays for salmon. While helping her relative Old Sam on his tender in the Gulf of Alaska, Kate discovers Meany's body in Alaganik Bay: he's been beaten, stabbed, strangled and drowned. Kate assists state trooper Jim Chopin's investigation. As they validate alibis, suspicions point to Meany's family. After Meany's daughter is murdered and his handyman disappears, Kate's lover, Jack Morgan, and his son, Johnny, visiting from Anchorage, help with her investigation. In a harrowing climax, Kate identifies the murderer and the unusual motive. The background allows Stabenow to examine the predicament of commercial fisherman threatened by fish farms, native subsistence fishing and lucrative sport fishing. As usual, Aleut customs are seamlessly woven into the plot; here, Auntie Joy is suing the government to retain traditional fishing rights. In powerful prose, Stabenow evokes Alaska's rugged physical splendors and the toll taken on the humans who live there.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.