A Night Too Dark-Dana Stabenow

A Night Too Dark
Dana Stabenow
Minotaur, Feb16 2010, $24.99
ISBN: 9780312559090

The Park in Alaska is a place of beauty to private detective Native American Kate Shugak, but the pristine landscape she loves will change when the Suulutaq Mine opens operations. Global Harvest Resources, the parent company learned the mine contains gold and after months of careful sampling and they know they have found quite a strike.

Already the firm is making changes that the inhabitants of the Park have to adapt to as people working the mine come to the town of Ninikltna. One of the newcomers leaves a note in his car stating he committed suicide. When the body of Dewayne Gammons is found, there is not enough left of him to make an identification. Kate has a hunch after two people from the mine disappeared at the sane time that the deceased is not Dewayne, but she has no idea who the victim is. As she seeks clues, a third person is killed, which makes Kate even more determined to find out what is going on at the mine.

Even before the homicides, Kate feels sad because the mining operation will change the Park though she is resigned that it will happen as people she respects sold out to the mining interests, which was not easy for them to do but they felt they had to tale advantage of people with money to spend. Still her melancholy over the mine does not prevent her from investigating as only she can. Her latest Alaskan Shootout is an entertaining whodunit that also showcases a difficult complex issue of needed economic development vs. maintaining the beauty of nature.

Harriet Klausner