Dana Stabenow

A Cold Blooded Business

Detective/Investigator: Kate Shugak
Location:                     Alaska
Time:                          Recent (mid 1990s)
Genre:

Kate Shugak is a former District Attorney's investigator, inveigled into specific jobs. She is a native Aleut living on a 160 acre holding in Alaska. In this novel she is asked to work undercover to discover who is responsible for drugs trafficing into a large closed industrial zone run by a major oil company. In this novel, the 4th in the series, she stumbles perhaps too fortuitously on the actual villains. Not quite as tight a plot as some of the previous Shugak novels I've read

An underlying concern in the Shugak novels is the status of Aleut and Inuit natives of Alaska, the frequent prejudice against them and their difficulty in coping with the rapid impact of the commercial development of Alaska, particularly the degrading influence of alcohol. The concern for the native Alaskans' disappearing culture lleads to a sub plot about the illegal export of historic ivory artefacts.

Rating B

Dana Stabenow web link

Previously read 
A Cold Day for Murder
A Fatal Thaw
Dead in the Water