A Deeper Sleep: A Kate Shugak Novel (Kate Shugak Novels)

by Dana Stabenow

Book Overview

In A Deeper Sleep, her first novel since Blindfold Game, the stand-alone political thriller that made Dana Stabenow a New York Times bestseller, Stabenow returns to the popular and award-winning Kate... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312937547
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 0.9" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

A Deeper Sleep

Superb story of the Alaskan country and native cultures. As an American Indian and an "Auntie" I love Stabenow's portrayal of the importance of "Aunties" in our cultures. Fine story line and great all around reading.

"I don't predict verdicts. The game is rigged."

Kate Shugak is the heroine of "A Deeper Sleep," Dana Stabenow's fifteenth novel in this long-running and successful series. Kate is a "120-pound package of strength, and courage and intelligence and humor" who, after spending five years as an investigator for the Anchorage District Attorney's office, went into the PI business for herself. A tough woman with a soft heart, she is the adoptive mother of fourteen-year-old Johnny Morgan, the son of her dead lover, Jack. Kate is related by blood to a large number of the residents of Niniltna, Alaska, where much of the action takes place. Kate is a person of fierce independence and integrity, as well as a passionate advocate for the underdog. A particular target of her antipathy is Louis Deem, a handsome sociopath who targets young women, whom he batters, molests, and rapes with impunity, somehow always managing to beat the rap. Kate, and her sometime lover, Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin, hope to put an end to Deem's winning streak. Stabenow's depiction of the Alaskan wilderness is magnificent. With gorgeous descriptive writing, she places the reader in the middle of the "Park," whose residents are known as Park rats. The National Park is bordered by such exotic natural and man-made boundaries as the Quilak Mountains, surrounded by a hundred glaciers, the Gulf of Alaska, known as the Mother of Storms, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Much of this area is navigable only by plane, and a gentleman named George Perry runs the Chugach Air Taxi service to help inhabitants and visitors get around this enormous territory. The author's keen sense of time and place (she includes a brief but fascinating section on Alaskan history) and her knowledge of the quirky characters who inhabit this remote terrain imbue her Shugak novels with a unique flavor. Here, people still hunt caribou, moose, and mountain goats, and fishermen harvest salmon that run up every stream. Some Park rats believe that there is still gold to be mined for those clever enough to find it; they dream of that one big strike that will set them up for life. For unwary squatters, tourists, and extreme sports enthusiasts, Alaska can be a dangerous place that has cost many careless people their lives. Kate cynically calls this "Suicide by Alaska." "A Deeper Sleep" works on various levels. Sabenow touches on the lives of a variety of colorful characters: Willard Shugak is six feet tall, developmentally disabled, and a thorn in Kate's side. He is always getting into trouble, especially when he hangs around with the aggressive and arrogant Louis Deem. Howie Katelnikof is another of Deem's hangers-on who dances to Louis's tune and provides him with convenient alibis. Jim Chopin, the aforementioned state trooper, is in love with Kate, but he is reluctant to commit to a long-term relationship. Bobby Clark is a double amputee, courtesy of Vietnam. He has started over with his wife Dinah, his baby daughter, and work as a broadcaster and

he best of the best!

Love Alaska? Love a good mystery? Love really good writing? This is the best! I only wish Dana Stabenow could write faster!!!

part mystery, part police procedural and part action thriller

Private detective Kate Shugak is an Alaskan Aleut who homesteads in the Park and was groomed by her grandmother to become the leader of the tribe and head of the Niniltna Native Association. Solitary by nature, Kate ignores the pleas of the "Aunties" and devotes her own time to raising her dead lover's son Johnny and luring state trooper Jim into a relationship with her. They both go to see the verdict on Park resident Louis Dean for murder. The jury acquits him in the death of his wife even though Louis has a habit of killing his wives and assaulting and raping females. Yet he has never been convicted. A few weeks later a woman and her child are murdered and their gold nugget collection stolen. Kate's ward Johnny identifies Louis as the killer. The DA refuses to prosecute so he walks once more leaving the residents of the park angry enough to murder him themselves. There are a lot of fun scenes in which Jim feels that he is going down for the count and Kate is getting ready to rope him in. These scenes are needed as counterpoint to the odious actions of a sexual predator and killer who has his henchmen try to kill Johnny and end up injuring Kate's beloved mutt. This Alaskan tale is part mystery, part police procedural and part action thriller. Harriet Klausner

Vulnerabilities and Uncertainties, Oh My!

In this 15th entry in Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak series, girls are being molested and murdered by a sociopath, Louis Deems. However, the girls claim they love the man, and jury members are warned off by his henchmen, so he seems to be above the law. He even seems able to thwart the legendary Kate and get away with it. Everyone agrees that something must be done, yet the "solution," when it comes, may lead to more problems than it solves... I think Kate turns the corner in this book -- from being indomitable and headstrong to beginning to consider the wishes of others and even to owning self-doubt. Her "fling" with Trooper Chopin is still flinging after all this time, and both parties are a bit surprised and wary -- it's almost like a relationship, and (to paraphrase Mae West) who wants to be in a relationship? Perhaps both Jim and Kate, do? Johnny continues to mature in exactly the way I think Johnny should -- he's a good kid, not some charicature thrown into the series to provide mindless drama, as so many teens seem to be. The Alaska lore and surroundings take a back seat this time and is seen mostly in exposition and with only a few close encounters of the Moose kind. Mutt plays a much bigger part, though, and is an extension of Kate in the story. I love Mutt -- she is easily my favorite character, and I think she deserves more page time in every book! Has Mutt ever had a real romance? That might be a big eye opener for Kate! Lastly, there is the question of the role Kate is to take within the community. The board members of the native corporation are the tribe's elders and leaders, and everyone except Kate agrees that she should be one of them. She doesn't want to be, and yet even she is beginning to realize that it is inevitable. Kate is growing up...