Hunter's Moon (Kate Shugak Series)

At Taiga Lodge, George Perry's exclusive big-game hunting camp 125 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska, the price of admission has a unique flavor. "The charges depend on the customer's attitude," George tells Kate Shugak, who's working as one of his assistant guides. "The more they piss me off, the higher the price." Which means the party of German computer executives that Kate and her colleagues are looking after will be lucky to go home with any money at all. More interested in firing off their expensive guns than in the sport of hunting moose, these guys are a danger to themselves and anyone else within range. But when human bodies start to outnumber moose-head trophies, the resourceful Aleut Indian Kate realizes that the deaths have more to do with financial and moral crimes back home in Germany than accidents in Alaska.

Hunter's Moon, Dana Stabenow's ninth installment in the excellent Kate Shugak series, is enriched with the intricate details of everyday Alaskan life. The author follows the lives of ordinary people as they try to survive the harshly majestic environment as best they can. She shows how people can be tempered and improved by the rugged country, or bent by it to the breaking point. Kate herself might occasionally acquire the mythic proportions of a fictional heroine, but she also embodies the pain and human frailty that make her instantly recognizable as one of us, no matter where we live. --Dick Adler