A GRAVE DENIED
Dana Stabenow
St. Martin's Paperbacks
Mystery
ISBN: 0312985649

In the cold and dangerous Alaskan landscape, a group of teenagers finds a corpse frozen at the edge of a glacier. After Johnny Morgan and his schoolmates make the gruesome discovery, the body is identified as local handyman Len Dreyer. State trooper Jim Chopin quickly calls in consulting investigator Kate Shugak to help him solve the case. Right away it is obvious from the huge bullet wound in Dreyer's chest that they are dealing with a murder. But why would anyone kill the man they all relied on for important work, big jobs and small? As Shugak works to answer this question, she soon realizes that while everyone in and around the Park is familiar with Dreyer, no one really knows him at all. And even a timeframe for the crime is difficult to construct as no one in the Park or in the nearby village of Niniltna even realized Dreyer was missing.

The Park is the national park where Shugak and others homestead. Shugak herself has a 160-acre homestead where she lives with her canine companion Mutt and now with Johnny Morgan, the fourteen-year-old son of her deceased lover. Smart and fiercely independent, Shugak takes on this case knowing that she is now responsible for housing and feeding Johnny in addition to herself. But in taking the case she exposes them both to extreme danger because somebody, perhaps Dreyer's killer, now wants her dead as well. Maybe Shugak is getting too close to the truth about this mysterious man.

Further complicating Shugak's work is her tense relationship with Chopin, a wannabe detective named Dandy Mike, the isolated lifestyles of the area residents, and her concern for Johnny and his well-being.

The truth about Dreyer's murder is as unexpected as it is shocking; the killer is as unlikely as it gets. A GRAVE DENIED is well-crafted with a straightforward and interesting plot and a number of great characters, most notably Shugak. In many ways, the story is also about the setting --- the glorious Alaskan wilderness and the fascinating people who live there. Dana Stabenow's sense of place and respect for Alaska and its citizens is obvious.

Basically this a good old-fashioned murder mystery, with a carefully rendered atmosphere, several suspects, a corpse no one knows much about and an awesome protagonist, who is trying to live her life the best she can while exploring a horrible death. This is crime fiction with requisite twists and turns but it is far from ordinary. A GRAVE DENIED is a mystery worth spending time in.

   --- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

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