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Book Review
Kate, who used to live and work in Anchorage, is a private investigator, living in Ninitna, Alaska. As one might expect, there is a romance; Kate's significant other is State Trooper Jim Chopin. Also as one might expect (at least if one is a dedicated reader of mystery novels,) trouble arrives. It arrives in the person of Louis Deem, a brutal thug who preys on young women who find him attractive and learn to know better too late. Kate and Jim know better, too, but have been unable to convict him of his crimes. The setting is a state park, and the natives are known as Park rats, not necessarily a derogatory term. Most of the Park rats are afraid of Kate, but not Louis Deem, who doesn't seem to be afraid of anybody. Stabenow is an Alaskan, and she makes the climate and landscape vivid. Her characters seem real, too, from intellectually challenged Willard (who turns out to be important to the plot) to the Aunties, who have helped raise many of the residents, and who really run the show. They are working hard to make Kate serve on the Ninitna Native Association, a course she firmly resists. Kate believed that "she was too blunt for the diplomacy required to shepherd a tribe between the Scylla of government funding and the Charybdis of intertribal warfare, and she had too little patience with human foible to be able to turn a blind eye." Stabenow often turns a clever phrase - "the staff he hired had shoe sizes bigger than their IQs." The humor relieves the tension, but there is plenty of tension, as Deem becomes a threat to Kate's family as well as others in the Park.
A Deeper Sleep is available at the Mary Willis Library.
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