Description:

Detective Kate Shugak's discovery of a decomposed body in a burned Alaskan woods leads her to a cultic community where outsiders are not welcome. By the Edgar Award-winning author of A Cold Day for Murder.

From Publishers Weekly

The crisp crunch of snow gives way to mosquitos and mushrooms as both cold weather-loving Kate Shugak and her latest adventure wilt in the warmth of an Alaskan June. Kate and photojournalist Dinah Cookman are harvesting forest mushrooms when they discover a naked, much-decomposed corpse and call in a trooper, who says that no one within 100 miles has been reported missing in the last year. But then the grandson of the local Bible-thumping preacher asks Kate to find his missing father, Daniel. The corpse is identified as the boy's father's and, while the police suspect no foul play, Kate wonders how the man died. Few share her curiosity: the boy asks her to stop investigating, and other locals answer her questions evasively. Then a gang of thugs wrecks her camp and injures Dinah. Even readers sympathetic to Stabenow's (A Cold-Blooded Business) plot-linked message on religious intolerance will struggle with the crudely inserted mushroom lore and other extraneous material that doesn't even yield a credible red herring. Maybe the likable Kate will perk up again when the temperature plummets. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

While picking morels in an area recently burned by forest fire, series protagonist Kate Shugak (A Cold Day for Murder, Berkeley, 1992) discovers a body covered in ashes and mushrooms. Attempts to identify the man coincide with Shugak's search for a local boy's missing father-a teacher ostracized by his father's Jerry Falwell-type community. As in previous titles, Stabenow utilizes police procedural connections via Alaskan troopers, endows her writing with admirable sensory desciptions of flora and fauna, and provides unusual settings for her deceptively simple plot. A fine selection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.