"Exciting who-done-it"

As he lay dying in his lover's arms, Jack Morgan made Kate Shugak promise to look after his son Johnny and to protect him from his mother. Since he wants to homestead with her in Alaska's National Park, Kate takes Johnny into her home and the residents of the park conspire with her to keep him hidden from his mother and outside authorities. Unfortunately nobody can protect Johnny or his classmates from seeing the body of a murdered man.

The homicide victim is Len Dreyer, who supported himself by doing construction and handyman jobs for the local residents. State Trooper Jim Chopin is in the middle of a crime wave so he asks Kate to learn if the victim had any enemies. She finds nobody really knew the man who left no paper trail for her to follow but her questions lead someone to burning down her log cabin, thinking she is in it. This case becomes very personal for Kate and she is determined to track down the killer or die trying.

This is one of the most successful, dynamic and refreshing mystery series of the last decade. The characters evolve, change and grow so that they remain unpredictable. A GRAVE DENIED is an exciting who-done-it because nobody will guess who the killer is until the author chooses to reveal his identity in a shocking climax. It is heartwarming to see the homesteaders rally around Kate in her time of troubles and says much about the goodness in most people's heart. This novel is must reading for anyone who likes an emotional, heart wrenching and dramatic relationship drama wrapped around a mystery.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted August 10, 2003

Summary

Everyone knew Len Dreyer, a handyman for hire in the Park near Niniltna, Alaska, but no one knew anything else about him. Even Kate Shugak hired him to thin the trees on her 160-acre homestead and was planning to ask him to help build a small second cabin on her property for Johnny Morgan, a teenaged boy in her care. But she, the Park's unofficial p.i., seems to have known less about him than anyone. Alaska is a place where anybody can bury his history and start fresh, and for any reason, but this particular mystery comes to light when Len Dreyer turns up murdered. His body is discovered, frozen solid, in the path of a receding glacier with the hole from a shotgun blast in his chest. No one even knew he was missing, but it turns out he's been missing for months. Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin asks Kate to help him dig into Dreyer's background, in the hope of finding some reason for his murder. She takes the case, mindful of the need for gainful employment as she copes with her responsibility for Johnny, a constant reminder of his father, her dead lover. Little does she imagine that by trying to provide for him she just might put him right in the path of danger. A talented writer at the prime of her abilities, Stabenow delivers a masterful crime novel that turns out to be as much about living as it is about dying.