Play With Fire (Kate Shugak, #05)

Formerly the star investigator in the Anchorage D.A's office, Kate Shugak now tracks down criminals from her Aleut homestead. But she and her wolf-dog Mutt are taking a June break to pick wild morel mushrooms among the charred trees left by a devastating forest fire. In the ashes Kate also uncovers the mysterious corpse of a naked man. And when she is "hired" by a ten-year-old to locate his missing dad, she fears she has already found him. The reason how and why he died, however, is buried deeper than his body. Finding it will lead Kate to the remains of a woolly mammoth in a Fairbanks museum, back to her old lover Jack Morgan, and far afield to an isolated settlement of religious fundamentalists ... as she follows a twisted road toward a smoldering evil and the flash point for a macabre murder. The fifth Kate Shugak mystery, Play With Fire contains all of Stabenow's hallmarks of ingenious plotting and vivid characterizations. Best of all, it is again set in magnificently austere, endlessly fascinating Alaska, which comes to life through the authentic details only a true insider can provide.
When P.I. Kate Shugak discovers a decomposed body in the forest fire-ravaged woods of Chistona, Alaska, her investigation leads her to a close-knit community whose rigid ideas and beliefs don't allow for opposition. With little to go on but her gut feeling, Kate delves into this group to try and root out a murderer.