Description:

"Alaska's finest mystery writer" (Anchorage Daily News) has given readers a hero to cheer for. Alaska state trooper Sergeant Liam Campbell is the representative of law and order in the fishing village of Newenham-yet struggles to keep his own life on an even keel. Now, just when his future is starting to heat up, he delves into a case of a downed WWII army plane found mysteriously frozen in a glacier.

Amazon.com Review

Like a spectral presence, a hand clutching a gold piece emerges from the ice of a calving glacier near the small town where Alaska state trooper Liam Campbell is investigating the brutal murder of a 74-year-old woman. The hand belonged to an army soldier killed with his crewmates in the crash of the World War II army plane entombed by the glacier a half century ago. Although it takes several long and occasionally tedious pages before Campbell and pilot Wy Chouinard make the connection between Lydia Tompkins's murder, the source of her family's mysterious wealth, and the secret mission that led to the crash of the old C-47, fans of this series won't mind. A skillful chronicler of Alaska's extraordinary landscape and its eccentric inhabitants, Dana Stabenow does a competent job with a plot that lacks much drama or suspense; what little there is comes from Liam and Wy's on-again, off-again romance. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Sgt. Liam Campbell's fourth outing (following 2000's Nothing Gold Can Stay) finds the Alaska state trooper exploring an old plane crash and a new murder in a story marked by Edgar winner Stabenow's superb depictions of the Alaskan landscape and its willful inhabitants. The discovery of a WWII-era American army plane embedded in the face of a glacier raises a surprising number of questions. And the murder of a feisty, elderly matriarch leads to some surprising revelations about her active life. Having through a misstep in his career landed in the small fishing town of Newenham on the eastern edge of Bristol Bay, Campbell now has a chance to return to Anchorage, but he's not sure he wants to. For one thing, there's his unresolved relationship with pilot Wyanet "Wy" Chouinard, typical of the many intriguingly complex relationships with which the author has filled the plot. The bonds of love, blood ties and friendships play out in convincing and satisfying fashion. Stabenow also laces her story with Alaskan history, from the development spurred by WWII, including the upgrade of the Alaska Railroad and construction of the Alcan Highway, to the halcyon days and more recent decline of the fishing industries. Passionate about his work and perhaps more clear-headed about his professional life than his personal life, Campbell makes an engaging hero, one who bids fair to become as popular as Kate Shugak, the heroine of Stabenow's other, long-running series.
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