Kate Shugak hires onto the staff of a political campaign to work security for a Native woman running for state senator. The candidate has been receiving anonymous threats, and Kate, who went to college with two of the staffers, is to become her shadow, watching the crowds at rallies and fundraisers. But just as she's getting started the campaign is rocked by the murder of their staff researcher, who, Kate discovers, was in possession of some damning information about the pasts of both candidates. In order to track the killer, Kate will have to delve into the past, in particular the grisly murder of a "good-time girl" during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1915. Little can she guess the impact a ninety-year-old unsolved case could have on a modern-day psychotic killer.
Amazon.com Review
Politics has a way of bringing out the worst in people. Anne Gordaoff is running for Alaska state senator, glad-handing everyone she sees (and who doesn't see her first); her campaign manager will stop at nothing to get her candidate elected; her randy husband is exploring alternative methods of interacting with the constituency; her campaign researcher is digging up dirt on Anne as well as on her opponent; and said opponent has planted a mole in her campaign. All in all, it's the sort of situation PI Kate Shugak would do anything to avoid. Kate is still recovering from a job gone horridly awry--"World War III, Denali-style"--that killed her lover, Jack Morgan, and left her with a brutal scar on her throat and a glacier-sized lump of bitter grief within it. Machiavellian maneuvering is not her style. But when Anne, a Native American, starts receiving anonymous threats, Kate allows herself to be talked into a temporary stint as Anne's bodyguard.
The first body to turn up, however, isn't Anne's but that of her fundraiser and future son-in-law. The police are tempted to chalk up the murder to an adulterous liaison interrupted by a jealous husband, but Kate's not convinced. And when the campaign is rocked again by the murder of Anne's campaign researcher Paula Pawlowski, Kate must dig through closets filled with skeletons and dirty laundry: Paula had been combining standard politicking with research into her burgeoning historical novel. Old sins have long shadows, but could Anne's campaign really be connected to the 85-year-old murder of a Klondike prostitute?
Kate may make you think of Kinsey Millhone, Sue Grafton's California PI. Neither woman suffers fools gladly, both are fiercely independent, and both are as adept as porcupines when it comes to keeping people (and their unwanted attention or embarrassing sympathy) at arm's length. Dana Stabenow, in turn, shares Grafton's gift for capturing a character or a scene with a few words and a touch of humor. Here's her take on the rigors of the campaign trail--"Kate slept in a lot of different beds, and some were comfortable and some were not. She ate a lot of her meals standing up or out of a bag. She became sick of the sight of the back of Anne Gordaoff's head."--and on Mutt, Kate's 140-pound, half-wolf companion--"Like Kate, Mutt didn't care for a lot of noise about her person."
If The Singing of the Dead, the 11th novel in the Kate Shugak series, is your first introduction to Kate and the vast, unforgiving corner of Alaska she calls home, it will most likely send you scrambling for installments one through 10. If you're already a confirmed Shugak fan, it will have you waiting impatiently for number 12. --Kelly Flynn
From Publishers Weekly
HThe background of a hard-fought political campaign in Alaska (where "in a gathering of four people there are five marriages, six divorces, and seven political parties") and the devastating effect of a century-old scandal on the candidates gives even greater depth than usual to Stabenow's 11th Kate Shugak mystery. Kate, slowly recovering from the death of her lover, Jack Morgan, in 2000's Midnight Come Again, is hired as a security expert by Anne Gordaoff, a state senate candidate of partial Native heritage who has received threatening letters. Also appealing to Kate for protection is Jack's teenage son, Johnny, who has run away from his abusive mother. When Gordaoff's future son-in-law and a woman doing background research for Gordaoff are murdered, Kate joins state trooper Jim Chopin and local police chief Ken Hazen in the investigation. The novel shifts effortlessly between the present and the past, tracing the career of one of the state's most notorious "good time girls" from the gold mining era. The author paints a strong, striking picture of the tough life in Alaska 100 years ago and the narrow choice offered women housekeeper or whore. The character of Angel Beecham, known as the Dawson Darling, is compellingly portrayed as a complex woman whose relationship to the contemporary characters is slyly revealed in the epilogue (but wait until you've finished the book to read it). With well-drawn characters, splendid scenery and an insider's knowledge of Alaskan history and politics, this fine novel ranks as one of Stabenow's best. (May 15)Forecast: Striking but rather generic jacket art may attract non-mystery readers, and planned national publicity should push Stabenow out of the "regional" category.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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