Midnight come again

Kate's tough life took a tragic turn when her long-time lover, Jack Morgan, was killed in last year's Hunter's Moon. In this ninth entry in the award-winning series, a guilty, inconsolable Kate, impulsively leaving her Alaska bush home for a coastal fishing village, goes to work incognito for Baird Air, a cargo airline. At Baird, she soon runs into Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin, a friend who's on an undercover job for the FBI. This is only one of several plot-churning coincidences in an otherwise poignant and gripping novel featuring breathtaking descriptions of natural scenery and incisive depiction of Alaskan natives caught between traditional and modern cultures. The FBI thinks that Russian gangsters are using a fishing vessel to smuggle stolen plutonium to right-wing groups, with Baird Air the likely shipper. Two arrogant "Fibbies" get their comeuppance when Jim and Kate uncover a Russian money-laundering scheme aided by a venal Alaska state senator and a crooked banker. The book has an uneven pace, with the slow first half reflecting Kate's grief; as the investigation speeds up, so does the action. In a heart-stopping climax aboard a hijacked airplane, pilot Jim performs aerial stunts to forestall the Russians pushing Kate out the door. Stabenow's evocation of the Kuskokwim delta and its inhabitants is as artful as her portrayal of the Alaskan bush country. And Kate, finally coming to terms with Jack's death, befriends a determined 10-year-old girl whose intelligence and independence mirror her own. Let's hope she reappears in further Shugak adventures. Author tour. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kate Shugak, Stabenow's Aleutian p.i., doesn't appear until halfway through her ninth adventure, which begins with an armored car hijacking in St. Petersburg, Russia, and moves to the FBI Russian Mafia Task Force in Washington, D.C., before touching down in Kate's hometown. Kate has vanished from Niniltna without a trace, and State Trooper `Chopper` Jim Chopin must leave for an undercover assignment in Bering without her. Coincidentally, Bering is where Kate has hidden herself, working 12-hour shifts as the one-woman ground crew for transport company Baird Air in order to keep her despair over her lover's murder (Hunter's Moon, 1999) at bay. Bering is also where the FBI, Chopper Jim, and the Russian Mafia play hide-and-seek with stolen plutonium. Enraged over Kate's desertion, and feeling something else he can't quite sort out, Jim gets scrambled still further when someone shoots him in the head. Swallowing her annoyance at Jim's interference, Kate goes to his rescue, touring a Russian fishing vessel and enlisting the help of a friend who gets beaten to death. Kate's wolf/husky Mutt foils one attempt on her life, but even she can't help when Kate and Jim have a showdown with a cargo of criminals at 30,000 feet. An exciting finale, a ten-year-old girl who flies model airplanes, and the return of Kate's fighting spirit make up for a slow start. Stabenow plumbs new depths in the once-shallow Chopper Jim and the violence of Kate's despair. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.