I’m up to the fourth installment in the Kate Shugak series; in this episode Kate is working undercover on the Trans-Alaska pipeline way north of the Arctic Circle, she’s trying to discover who is importing and dealing cocaine on the oil companies property.

These books are a really quick easy read, this one only comes in at just over 200 pages in paperback, but they’ve got far more substance to them than many thicker tomes have and I’m really surprised how much interesting stuff is packed between the covers. Kate has a habit of forgetting what she’s supposed to be looking into but the rather minimal mystery plot isn’t a problem because it gives Stabenow enough breathing space to explore other things: Kate’s Aleut heritage, life on the pipeline (a lot cushier than I’d have thought and definitely a step up from the last book where she Kate was working on a crab fishing boat), archaeology in the Arctic, and so on.

This was definitely the best in the series so far and I’m pleased I have further to go with this series than I’ve come.