The case starts when Tommie Leokuk’s husband brings her to Active’s office to show him what she found in her latest midnight ramble around the Arctic hamlet of Chukchi. From the pouch of her traditional atiqluk, she pulls a human jawbone with a single molar still in place.
Tommie’s dementia means she can’t explain where she found it. As her husband explains, “She lost her brain few years ago.”
---
Ghost Light is the 7th in the Nathan Active series set in Alaska, but the first one I've read. Nathan Active was adopted by a white family and raised in Anchorage, but in the first book, Active found himself back in the area where he was born as Police Chief, trying to fit in culturally with the Inuit community. (I may have to go back to the first book and read through the series.)
I liked the way this case was investigated and the way information had to be filtered as new information became available. The characters were also interesting, not just Chief Active, but the minor characters who are part of the community. The murderer is one of two options...but which one? I will check out the previous books at some point and get to know the characters better.
Purchased.
Mystery. Sept. 15, 2021. Print length: 258 pages.
Toni and Sam have a small wedding planned, done their way, without elaborate plans, and on that morning, Toni is looking forward to seeing Sam and after the ceremony heading to the Scilly Isles for their honeymoon. But the person at the door is not her ride; it is the police to inform her of Sam's death, and Toni's world begins to unravel in the worst of ways. The police tell her that Sam and a teenage girl have been drowned in an apparent suicide.
Unable to come to grips with Sam's death and unable to believe that he was having an affair with an underage girl, Toni eventually contacts Tyrone Swift.
She wants him to find out the truth. The police have found no evidence of anything other than suicide, and Toni still doesn't believe it. Swift warns her that he may not be able to prove Toni right, that the truth may be unpalatable, but Toni insists on hiring him.
Toni's friends have given her strong support over the months since Sam's death, but they are not at all sure that Toni has done right thing in hiring Swift. They seem to want her to eat better and begin getting on with her life. With little to go on and some reluctance from people trying to protect Toni, Sam begins interviewing people, looking for a way into Sam's life and behavior before the wedding.
NetGalley/Joffe Books
British Detective. Dec. 22, 2022. Print length: 318 pages.
-------
I'd much rather read than review, and many other readers face the same dilemma. How many of you are caught up with your reviewing?
