Shaman Pass--Stan Jones

This book is the 2nd in the Nathan Active series put out by Soho Press. I've previously gone into my love for them, no? Anyway, the first book was White Sky, Black Ice and introduced Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active. Active's posted in the Arctic Circle village of Chukchi, where he's an outsider eager to leave. He's got a history there--he was born in Chukchi, but his Inupiat mom gave him to his white adoptive parents who were teachers at the high school. Active was raised down in Anchorage, caught between both the white and Inupiat worlds.

This book opens with Active a little more comfortable with his life--his job's okay, he's a little more assimilated culturally although still prone to false moves (one ongoing joke has to do with his recent purchase of a particular snowgo), and feeling a bit guilty over a personal lack of commitment to his girlfriend. The crime is the murder of Victor Solomon, who is found at his ice fishing hole stabbed with an ivory harpoon that belonged to "Uncle Frosty," a mummy that had been returned to the community earlier that day in accordance with the Indian Graves Act. Solomon had spearheaded (pun!) the plan to put Uncle Frosty in a museum as a tourist attraction, which was vocally protested by local crank Calvin Maiyumerak. At the same time as the murder, Uncle Frosty went missing.

Active's work on the case takes him all over the village, into discussions of local history with his grandfather, and turns out to be tied to Uncle Frosty's identity and into the outer reaches of Alaska.

This book rocks--I love the secret of the murder, which turns out to be based in history and cultural mores. Jones does an excellent job conveying the details of life in the frozen climate, and the climax is particularly gripping. He doesn't over explain or badger the reader with "it's cold and hard"--the small details of life drive it home with subtle grace. Honey buckets, pilot bread, "dogs" that look like wolves who require their own caribou hunting trips to keep them fed--Jones' eye for detail really makes the book.

So, great story that's wonderfully told, but here's the kicker that warms my little librarian heart: there's a part where Nathan does research. First he tries the internet and the phone, and then calls the University of Alaska where a librarian helps him and directs him immediately to what he needs. Do you know how many books I have read where people find the most obscure things on the internet with no problem at all? Many, many, many. Do you know how much that irritates me? Immensely. Because it is unrealistic--not everything is available on the internet. Not everything is free. Librarians have special skills. We want to help people and get them what they need, but in popular culture (heck, even in real life sometimes!) it's like we don't exist.

But, even better--the librarian explains that the material he needs has been digitized and it's on the internet, but it's just not indexed and publicized, which is why he couldn't locate it with a search engine. So Nathan Active gets the address of the material, and opens the page, and finds what he needs.

So at this point my head is about to explode, but for great reasons--we have a helpful librarian character, an illustration of classic information seeking behavior, a solution that is completely realistic, and the situation ends happily with the message "Librarians=Good." Bless you, Stan Jones!