If you like your mysteries cold, dark, and baffling, you’ll enjoy Paige Shelton’s third installment in her Alaska Wild series. Successful thriller writer Beth Rivers is still living in a small, hard-to-reach town in the interior of Alaska, far away, she hopes, from the deranged kidnapper who physically and sexually abused her for several days before she finally escaped from his moving vehicle, severely injuring herself in the process.
One night, while staying as a guest at a halfway house in town, she awakens on the floor of her bedroom to find that her door, which she was fairly sure she had locked, is now unlocked. Shortly after, she discovers that a man has been shot and killed in the center of town, not far from the halfway house. Without witnesses and with falling snow covering any tracks, the snow and the mystery deepens. Drunk and belligerent for most of his short stay in town, the dead man had made enemies quickly, including a newly arrived census taker.
Adding to the complexity of the situation, Beth finds that her mother, on the run from the police in the lower 48 after tracking down and wounding Beth’s kidnapper, is still on the loose from the authorities and has somehow managed to find her in the Alaska wilds. Together, they try to untangle the small-town murder while catching up on their recent past. In the process, Beth learns some of what happened to her father who left them when she was age seven and has never been seen or heard from again.
The author does an outstanding job of recreating the bitter cold and treacherousness of an Alaskan winter to the point where it might be advisable to keep a sweater handy while reading.