Paperback: Born to a poor Inupiat girl in Chukchi, Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle, State Trooper Nathan Active was adopted and raised by a white family in Anchorage. Now, an unwelcome job reassignment has returned him to the stark, beautiful landscape of poverty-stricken Chukchi. Two suspicious suicides in the span of a week and rumours of trouble in the village and at the local copper mine lead Active to believe there is a killer at large. As a nalauqmiiyaaq, or someone regarded by the community as “halfwhite,” he must fight for every clue before the killer strikes again.
While this tough, gritty mystery generates only modest suspense, its exotic setting will hold readers throughout. Jones has a real knack for depicting the daily life of a small Inupiat community, and the toll that alcoholism has taken on it. White Sky, Black Ice (1999) has been nominated for the Barry Award for First Best Novel.
About the author: Stan Jones (born 1947) is an American writer of mystery and science fiction novels, and is co-author of a non-fiction oral history book. Jones was born in Anchorage, Alaska, where he lives today but his parents were from Tennessee and moved back there when he was about two. He spent his boyhood through age twelve on a farm near the Tennessee-Mississippi border. All of his books to date are set in Alaska. He is married to Susan Jones, an epidemiologist, and has two children, both adults. Other than his family and the Arctic, his personal passion in life is photography, particularly photography of the North.
He has written four books in the Nathan Active mystery series. In order of publication, they are
White Sky, Black Ice (1999)
Shaman Pass (2003)
Frozen Sun (2008)
Village of the Ghost Bears (2009)
Tundra Kill (2016)
He is also the co-author (with Sharon Bushell) of The Spill: An Oral History of the Exxon Valdez Disaster (2009).
Rating: 4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment