By Dana Stabenow
Minotaur Books, $25.99, 384 pages
Restless in the Grave is the 19th book in the Kate Shugak series. When a well known pilot flies his airplane into the frozen turf of Alaska everyone is a suspect in what Alaska State Trooper Liam Campbell refers to as sabotage. He wants Kate to investigate because she would be an outsider looking in and would bring a fresh pair of eyes to the investigation.
It turns out the late Mr. Grant was blackmailing everyone who had anything to do with air freight in Alaska. Along the way, Kate encounters a Hollywood star, gets thrown into a chest freezer, unceremoniously dropped into a dumpster and locked in the hold of a fishing ship headed to Russia – all in the pursuit of justice.
The best that can said of this book is that it is mildly entertaining, with plausible but not likely events that lead up to the capture of the killer. Not surprisingly, the root of all this evil involves selling stolen weapons to the Russians who then sell them to terrorists. Fans of the previous Kate Shugak novels will no doubt embrace the book, newcomers to the series might want to read the early novels to get a better idea of the lead character.
Reviewed by Dick Morris
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