A Cold-Blooded Business: A Kate Shugak Mystery

Rating:
Summary: Cold-Blooded Business Smokes
Review: COLD-BLOODED BUSINESS smokes. Dana Stabenow is a terrific mystery writer, and this novel is a smoking good mystery. Kate Shugak, a strong native Alaskan superwoman, is in prime form here. She goes undercover as an oilfield roustabout to investigate drug smuggling. Stabenow describes her frigid Alaskan setting with perfection. I love her characters--the good ones as well as the evil ones. Even the ones in-between. COLD-BLOODED BUSINESS is an awesome book.

Rating:
Summary: Cold-Blooded Business Smokes
Review: COLD-BLOODED BUSINESS smokes. Dana Stabenow is a terrific mystery writer, and this novel is a smoking good mystery. Kate Shugak, a strong native Alaskan superwoman, is in prime form here. She goes undercover as an oilfield roustabout to investigate drug smuggling. Stabenow describes her frigid Alaskan setting with perfection. I love her characters--the good ones as well as the evil ones. Even the ones in-between. COLD-BLOODED BUSINESS is an awesome book.

Rating:
Summary: Kate Works the Pipeline
Review: It is such a pleasure to read these early entries in the wonderful Kate Shugak series, and to get to know our main character book by book.

In this fourth book in the series, Kate, working undercover to find the source of a mighty cocaine habit among workers on the Pipeline (unnamed, but obviously a conglomerate of existing pipeline behemoths), hires on as a roustabout in Alaska's Far North. Knowing that her very presence at the oil company's home base will offend her formidable grandmother for all time, Kate nevertheless quickly gets used to the work, the comraderie--and most of all, the nonstop food, akin to a cruise ship. Between gorging herself on luscious steaks, homemade fries and all-you-can-eat ice cream sundaes, Kate begins to sense the evil and dangerous drug busines that lurks beneath the surface.

With some much-needed "down time" with lover Jack and wonder dog Mutt (half huskie, half wolf) to clear her head, Kate uncovers a plot that threatens to undermine not only the giant oil company, but her very life as well.

Fun, fast read...absolutely delightful.

Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful Alaskan mystery
Review: This is an exciting, suspenseful and atmospheric mystery set in Alaska. Aleut investigator Kate Shugak goes undercover working on the pipeline for an oil company to find out who's supplying cocaine to its employees. I could have done with a little less detail on the processes involved in oil extraction, but there's a lot to enjoy here. Much of Kate's first day at the base camp is quite funny, and there are enough colorful, eccentric people to satisfy anyone. I enjoyed the interlude in Anchorage with Kate and her wolf-Siberian husky mix, Mutt, one of those dogs you find in mysteries who obviously have more sense than some of the human characters. The identity of one of the drug dealers really surprised me. Not only is this a good, entertaining story; it's also true to life in showing, as Kate points out, how drugs can make smart people stupid and greedy.

Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful Alaskan mystery
Review: This is an exciting, suspenseful and atmospheric mystery set in Alaska. Aleut investigator Kate Shugak goes undercover working on the pipeline for an oil company to find out who's supplying cocaine to its employees. I could have done with a little less detail on the processes involved in oil extraction, but there's a lot to enjoy here. Much of Kate's first day at the base camp is quite funny, and there are enough colorful, eccentric people to satisfy anyone. I enjoyed the interlude in Anchorage with Kate and her wolf-Siberian husky mix, Mutt, one of those dogs you find in mysteries who obviously have more sense than some of the human characters. The identity of one of the drug dealers really surprised me. Not only is this a good, entertaining story; it's also true to life in showing, as Kate points out, how drugs can make smart people stupid and greedy.

Rating:
Summary: Not One Of Her Best
Review: Too much detail concerning the oil business in Alaska. The plot could have been a bit stronger. Good characters, as always, and an action filled conclusion save the story.

Rating:
Summary: Not One Of Her Best
Review: Too much detail concerning the oil business in Alaska. The plot could have been a bit stronger. Good characters, as always, and an action filled conclusion save the story.

Rating:
Summary: Exciting, thrilling, captivating, and lots of fun.
Review: When I grow up I want to be Kate Shugak. I want to be fiercely independant, pretty, strong and intelligent. I want to work for money when I need it at the jobs I choose. I want to be able to live off the land and live in the middle of nowhere. I want a beautiful fierce dog at my side. I want the relationships in my life to be by their own rules. I want to live an unboring life of excitement, whether it's dangerous or peaceful. Never mind that Kate is two years younger than I am now, I want to be her when I grow up!