Showing results for "The Kate Shugak Investigations" in All Categories

Two thousand people go missing in Alaska every year. They vanish in the middle of mountain footraces, on fishing boats in the Bering Sea, on small planes in the Bush. Now a geologist known for going walkabout with his rock hammer has disappeared from the Suulutaq Mine in the Park. Was it deliberate? An accident? Foul play? Kate Shugak may be the only person who can find out. But for the fact that Kate, too, is among the missing....

When winter's done, but spring has not yet fully sprung, much of Alaska turns to slush. Locally, it's called "breakup," and it's a…messy time of year. It's certainly messy for Kate Shugak; between doing her taxes, being chased by grizzlies, and getting shot at by feuding families, she has to cope with an NTSB investigation that hits very close to home. Then, of course, there's the body in the woods. And up at the old mining town. And…being Kate Shugak, somehow she can't leave well enough alone, and begins to tease apart a well-planned and surprising crime.

On her homestead in the middle of twenty million acres of national Park, Aleut P.I. Kate Shugak is caught up in spring cleaning, unaware that just miles away another Park rat is planning a massacre. When the sound of gunfire finally dies away, nine of his neighbors lie dead in the snow.But did he kill all nine, or only eight? The ninth victim was killed with a different weapon. It’s up to Kate and her husky-wolf sidekick Mutt to untangle the life of the dead blonde with the tarnished past and find her killer.

Guiding becomes a deadly business when Kate Shugak accepts a contract to shepherd a group of German computer executives on an Alaskan hunting retreat. As the fog rolls in and people start dying, Kate and her boyfriend Jack discover how very seriously their charges take the sport. A hunter's moon signals a season of gathering and plenty, but Kate finds herself out of resources and at her most vulnerable. She must find the strength to not only survive, but repay. This time, the guide becomes the huntress.

It's fishing season, and Kate Shugak is working with Old Sam aboard the fish tender Freya when Cal Meany floats up dead. His reputation as a womanizer, strike breaker, and abusive father ensures that there are several suspects, multiple motives, and quite possibly more than one murderer. While Kate investigates the killing, her aunties mend nets, operate an illegal fish camp, and impart cultural wisdom to Jack and his son Johnny. Ultimately, Kate finds herself in grave danger, as even her aunts join the list of suspects.

A mushroom hunting foray turns gruesome when Kate Shugak stumbles across a burnt, decaying corpse amid a grove of morels. Was the deceased the hapless victim of last year's forest fire? Why has no one reported him missing? And why wasn't he wearing any clothes? Absent evidence of foul play, the troopers are inclined to call it death by misadventure; Kate's instincts suggest otherwise, leading her down a path that requires her to confront issues of community, faith, and free will.

It's a crisp, snowless October in The Park. The root cellar is full, the cordwood is stacked, the oil drums are filled and there’s a freshly-butchered moose in her cache, but Kate Shugak must leave her cabin and head into the chaos of Anchorage, where the Alaska Federation of Natives’ annual convention is being held. Why? Because board members of the Niniltna Native Association have been dying...board members who just happened to oppose a lucrative new development project.

It is New Year's Eve, nearly six weeks into an off-and-on blizzard that has locked Alaska down, effectively cutting it off from the outside world. But now there are reports of a plane down in the Quilak mountains. With the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board - responsible for investigating aviation incidents) unable to reach the crash site, ex-trooper Jim Chopin is pulled out of retirement to try to identify the aircraft, collect the corpses, and determine why no flight has been reported missing. But Jim discovers survivors: two children who don't speak a word of English.

A string of drug-related accidents at an oil company's rig in the Arctic Circle forces Kate Shugak to go undercover to scope out a cocaine connection along the TransAlaskan Pipeline. She's out to ID a major deal and shut down his operation. Of course, the deal has other ideas....

Eighteen months ago, Aleut Kate Shugak quit her job investigating sex crimes for the Anchorage DA’s office and retreated to her father’s homestead in a national park in the interior of Alaska. But the world has a way of beating a path to her door, however remote. In the middle of one of the bitterest Decembers in recent memory ex-boss — and ex-lover — Jack Morgan shows up with an FBI agent in tow.

Once, Kate Shugak was the star investigator of the Anchorage D.A.'s office. Now she's gone back to her Aleut roots in the far Alaska north - where her talent for detection makes her the toughest crime-tracker in that stark and mysterious land.