You know an author loves a character when:

• On page 5 she is scrambling for her life from a mama grizzly bear
• On page 10, .30-06 in hand, she is seeing off a second, juvenile, grizzly, successfully, albeit at the cost of a trashed meat cache and demolished garage door
• On page 16, while she trying to figure out whether a bequest of meat from her grandmother is of interest to the IRS, the engine of a 747 falls out of the sky and crushes her pickup, while a bit of the fusilage holes her roof, halves her sofa, and sends shrapnel through her copy of Wind in the Willows.
• On page 32, the official examination of the rubble is crashed by a moose, a third grizzly, two whiskey-sodden rednecks, and a Park Ranger in hot pursuit.
• And then there’s the corpse, found on page 27.

The author is Dana Stabenow, and the character is Kate Shugak, a short, salty woman with a scarred thoat, robust libido, and taste for SF (like her author, who started her career writing SF), who’s definitely retired from the detecting business, oh yes, not to mention the community leadership business, and is just trying to mind her homestead and get her taxes straight. But it’s Breakup in Alaska, when the bears are out and owly, and the humans are out and owlier. The East coast blueblood parents of fugitive debutante turned champion musher Amanda have arrived for a visit. Cindy has had her fill of husband Ben’s drinking and profligacy, and says so with lead. There’s another corpse, a charming sexy widower with a not-quite-right story, the fourth and scariest grizzly, the Denali Park version of the Hatfields and the McCoy’s, and Kate on her feet and snarling through it all.

Though I must confess, while a Kate Shugak mystery always renews my desire to head North, I don’t think it will be in April.