Village
of the Ghost Bears
A
Nathan Active Mystery
Stan
Jones
Soho
Crime (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-56947-606-3 (1569476063)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-606-2 (9781569476062)
Publication Date: December 2009
List Price: $24.00
Synopsis (from the publisher): Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active must figure out what connects a dead hunter on a remote Arctic lake with a year-old fatal plane crash in the Brooks Range and a fire at the Chukchi Recreation Center that killed eight people, including the town’s basketball star. The case turns out to involve a lucrative polar bear poaching operation and the intense bond between a brother and sister from the village of Cape Goodwin, famous in the Arctic for twins, polar bears, and schizophrenia. The heart of the matter, he discovers, is a dead woman whose killer remembers her as having a mouth so sweet “it was like kissing a Hershey bar.”
Review:
Inupiaq Alaskan State Trooper Nathan Active investigates a mysterious
fire while separately seeking to identify a dead body found washed
ashore on a nearby lake in Village
of the Ghost Bears,
the fourth mystery in this series by Stan Jones.
Active and his longtime love Grace are just beginning a camping trip
along the shores of One-Way Lake when they stumble upon the body of a
man whose face has been eaten away by local pike. But before they can
arrange to have the body recovered, Active is called to the small town
of Chukchi, a coastal village in northwest Alaska, where a recreation
center has burned down, killing eight people who were trapped inside
when the exit doors were wired shut. The motive for arson isn't
obvious, nor is one for murder ... if one of the dead was the intended
target. Then there's still that unknown man at One-Way Lake. Almost
certainly an accidental death from a fall, but until the body can be
recovered and identified it remains another mystery for Active to solve.
Though Active pursues his arson investigation with appropriate aplomb,
the real appeal in Village of the
Ghost Bears
comes from the depiction of life in a small town and region in a remote
part of the country. The fairly straight-forward plot moves along
briskly, no doubt helped by a considerable amount of dialog, though a
few more paragraphs of simple, descriptive narrative would have helped
develop a more atmospheric setting for the characters. Still, there's
no denying the excitement generated by some of the more thrilling
aspects of the story, especially when Active and bush pilot Cowboy are
flying off somewhere.
Active
watched as the pass crawled closer on Cowboy's side of the plane.
Through the mist and snow, he thought he glimpsed a rock-walled valley
on the south side, with a thread of water in its center diving toward
the Isignaq River far below. Cowboy yelled "Here we go!" over the
intercom, and the world rotated ninety degrees as he snapped the plane
into a punishing left turn. He leveled the wings just in time to skim
across the saddle so low that Active thought for a moment he had
decided to land and taxi to the far edge. Then the terrain fell away,
Cowboy dropped the nose, and they were under the clouds and in
relatively clear air, hurrying down the rocky valley Active had
glimpsed moments earlier.
There aren't many mystery series set in Alaska, so it's always a
pleasure to read one such as Village
of the Ghost Bears
that not only crafts an interesting story but also pays tribute to both
the land and its people.
Special thanks to Soho Press for providing an ARC of Village of the Ghost Bears for this review.
Review Copyright © 2010 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read Village of the Ghost Bears? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series …
White
Sky, Black Ice
Soho Crime (Hardcover), May 1999
ISBN-10: 1-56947-152-5 (1569471525)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-152-4 (9781569471524)
Shaman
Pass
Soho Crime (Hardcover), April 2003
ISBN-10: 1-56947-332-3 (1569473323)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-332-0 (9781569473320)
Frozen
Sun
Bowhead Press (Trade Paperback), September 2008
ISBN-10: 0-9799803-7-2 (0979980372)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9799803-7-4 (9780979980374)
Village of the Ghost Bears
Soho Crime (Hardcover), December 2009
ISBN-10: 1-56947-606-3 (1569476063)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-606-2 (9781569476062)
Omnimystery
keywords for Village of the Ghost
Bears
...
Location(s) referenced: Alaska.
