What do You think about Midnight Come Again (2001)?
Midnight Come Again is book number Ten in the Kate Shugak series by Dana Stabenow - 4 stars. At the end of book 9 Kate's long term love, Jack Morgan, was murdered. This book picks up the story about 10 months later - Kate has been missing most of that time. Sgt. Jim Chopin of the Alaska State Police is assigned a special mission to Bering, Alaska to locate a Russian gangster suspected of smuggling Plutonium - and who should he run into in Bering, but Kate.This is a story about Kate dealing with death and blaming herself. She has essentially given up the will to live, but running into Jim, and an opportunity to do police work again ignites the spark that starts her back down the path to normalcy again. Excellent story with believable characters and relatalbe emotions. Makes me eager to pick up book number Eleven.
—Bruce Snell
An absolutely top-notch entry in Stabenow's Kate Shugak series. It has several extra pluses here. First, it takes place away from Kate and Jim's usual stomping grounds in Niniltna and The Park, so we get a new Alaskan city as a background--and Stabenow knows Alaska well!Second, since Jim and Kate are both working incognito, they do not have the backing of all their usual clan of friendsThird, Stabenow cleverly shifts the point of view back and forth from Jim to Kate. Usually, we get mainly Kate's point of view--this is a refreshing and neat difference.We have meet some new and interesting characters (Stephanie Chevak!!) and taut suspenseful tale. A very good mix of action and character makes this worth your time. Highly recommended.Note: Enough background is given that you can read the series out of order--of course if read in order certain scenes have more punch. But this book will stand alone.(ATTn: Dana Stabenow--if you are reading this--TOP Marks for the scene in Chapter 12 where Heidi the librarian get the better of two FBI agents!!)Recommended highly for any mystery fan--the Kate Shugak series--of which I have read seven--has consistent, high quality writing.
—Mary JL
This was my first Kate Shugak book and though I liked the descriptions of the Alaska setting and strong central characters, I did feel that it was probably the wrong book to read as a first introduction to the series. The first two hundred or so pages of the book seem primarily to focus on Kate's recovery from something that happened to her in the previous book and Jim dealing with this new Kate; less on a plot line. If you are a follower of these books then maybe this was necessary but for someone coming fresh to the series, I felt that there was too much focus on this. The FBI characters were mere caricatures and although there were some interesting personalities such as Baird and Stephanie, I felt that the strongest characters were probably those featured in the previous books and that were only hinted at here. The Russian plot was slightly generic and the murder of a local character seemed a little contrived. I like to think, however that I would enjoy the earlier books a little more and will be giving the series another try in the future.
—Jo
