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July 3
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Midnight Come Again
by Dana Stabenow
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Reviewed by Ted Fitzgerald
Just as American business has gotten used to
the ISO 9000 international quality standard,
crime fiction readers are now grappling with
acceptance of a new storytelling standard, ISO
2000, ISO in this case standing for Icing of
Significant Others. Indeed, it seems as if in the
last two years or so, more crime solvers'
sweethearts have picked up their room key from
St. Pete than mobsters were mowed down in the
St. Valentine's Day Massacre. And Alaska's Kate
Shugak is no exception. Last seen clutching her
lover's body at the end of Hunter's Moon, Kate
is nowhere to be found as Midnight Come
Again opens.
Searching for the Inuit detective is Jim
Chopin, the state trooper and ladies man known
as Chopper Jim. His frustrating hunt is
interrupted by an undercover assignment that
takes him to Bering, a busy fishing town on the
Kuskokwim River in southwestern Alaska,
where he's expected to help the Feds identify
and capture a ruthless Russian mobster who's
intending to smuggle nuclear material in
through the U.S.'s northernmost back door. His
first surprise (and the first of many coincidences
in this book) is his co-worker at the air freight
service that's his cover. She's none other than
the missing Kate, shorn of her real name and
much of her hair, seeking refuge from
memories, sorrow and any real feeling through
endless hours of hard labor. The meeting sets off
sparks of anger and conflicting emotions and
leads to complications, personal and
professional. The mixed results of Jim's
sleuthing come to involve Kate in the case and
become the catalyst for her gradual and painful
reentry into the world of the living.
Midnight Come Again is rich in detail and
character. Dana Stabenow's portrait of Bering in
its busiest season, her implicit nod to the vital
link air travel plays in the 49th state, her
observations about politics, native culture,
business and human nature are interesting and
instructive. Her characterizations, including
Kate's relationship with her old college
roommate, Alice, Alice's striving daughter
Stephanie, and Alice's grandfather, who, it turns
out, knew Kate's Emaa, very well, and, in
particular, her angry, passionate and sometimes
humorous sparring with
Jim (whose book this is
almost as much as it is Kate's) are
compassionate, warm and involving. Indeed, an
unspoken subtext of the novel is how personal
relationships are as vital to survival as air
transportation, food and shelter in the wide
range and vast solitude of Alaska.
The weak spot in Midnight is the mystery
plot, which tends to mosey along and which
relies heavily on coincidence, people being in
the right place at the right time, and even a swift
and timely recovery from temporary amnesia.
There's not much wrong with using these
conventions, providing they are sufficiently
obscured so that the reader doesn't spot them
right away. Which is not the case here. It's as if
Stabenow framed the walls and put in the
wiring but neglected to hang the sheetrock.
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