Changes

You would think that if there were two villages side by side then they would be much of a muchness with lots of toing and froing between them and with regular intermarriages. It wasn't so with Kushtaka and Kuskulana in the Alaskan National Park. One village - well, a small township really - thrived, whilst the other, Kushtaka, went downhill. A hundred years of bad blood occasionally erupted into violence and there was little doubt that the responsibility for suspicious death of a teenager was down to the people of Kuskulana and that there would be vengeance. It was down to State Trooper Jim Chopin to find the culprit and prevent the inter-village warfare from escalating out of control.

In her acknowledgements Stabenow says that she had problems with ''telling'' rather than ''showing'' before the book was edited and I don't think they were entirely cleared up. I've always been impressed by her ability to cut straight to the heart of the story but this time I'll confess to finding the opening just a little ''tedious'' with rather too much in the way of long- and short-term history. As a new reader this might well stand you in good stead, but I think you'd also find keeping up with the who's who and from where just a little difficult - and made even more confusing by the names of the two villages being so similar. If you've read part of the series I'd advise keeping the books in order - I kept suffering 'oh, no, So and So is ''dead''' moments.