Pavloff and His Dog: A Dan Blackhorse Mystery

PAVLOFF AND HIS DOG is a murder mystery on an Aleutian Island where whales abound, as do bald eagles, king crab and salmon.

After spending Thanksgiving week in Anchorage, Alaska, high school sweethearts Marion Jacobs and Billy Harwood fly back to Pavloff Island, where it can be calm, stormy, eighty-mile-an-hour-gale and sunny all in the same day. The couple believe they are in love and have discussed marriage when they graduate in June, however, some cultural issues still muddy their path toward a life together.
On the landing approach, they spot a body floating in the bay just off the end of the runway. It turned out to be a popular high school teacher and former Chicago Bears linebacker, perhaps destined for the hall of fame. The Alaska State Police send their lead detective, Dan Blackhorse, a transplanted Osage Indian from Oklahoma, who immediately pronounced the teacher’s death murder. In order to penetrate the wall of silence around the Aleut-Eskimo fishermen of this island who are always suspicious of strangers, Detective Blackhorse must enlist the help of several locals--the fish and game warden, the high school sweethearts, the physician’s assistant and the only Black man on the island, three high school teachers and the school secretary.
At the end of his first day on the island, as the detective left his motel room for his evening meal, the whole motel blew up. It was clearly a C-4 explosive and someone didn’t know how to use it. A couple of weeks later during a progressive dinner on a cold Saturday night, another teacher is murdered. The investigation gets murkier when some high school boys are caught red-handed stealing gasoline, and a businessman absconded with his partners’ funds and fled the country. Detective Blackhorse and his team finally put the puzzle together.