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Oct 10, 2015DorisWaggoner rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
All the Kate Shugak novels are good, and well worth reading for the plot, characters, and Alaskan setting. This is one of the best. The Park's teenagers find a dead handyman's body on a school field trip, and have to deal with death in a very visceral way. All the Park rats "knew" him, but it turns out nobody did, not even his correct name. So the book turns on the notion of identity. The dead man isn't who anybody thought he was, so Trooper Jim hires PI Kate to find out his real identity, and when he was last seen in the Park. She has no idea that will put Johnny in danger, or cost her the cabin she was born in. Even Bobby, the only black man in the Park, whose past is a mystery, has his identity challenged when his bigoted brother shows up from TN begging him to come "home." Another man ends up murdered as well, because he tries to solve the first murder, and Kate and Mutt almost become victims themselves. Identity, that most precious commodity for each of us, can become a threat in the wrong hands.