Read Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 01 - Lost Angel Online

Authors: Mike Doogan

Tags: #Mystery

Nik Kane Alaska Mystery - 01 - Lost Angel

Lost Angel
Nik Kane Alaska Mystery [1]
Mike Doogan
Penguin Group USA, Inc. (2005)
Rating:
***
Tags:
Mystery

### From Publishers Weekly

Meet Nik Kane, the charming star of a new series by *Anchorage Daily News* columnist Doogan. Kane, a 55-year-old ex-cop who's also an ex-con, not to mention an ex-husband, heads to the Alaskan interior to do some detective work for a remote religious community called Rejoice. One of Rejoice's leaders, Thomas Wright, has hired Kane to track down his teenage daughter, Faith. Maybe Faith ran away, or maybe she was abducted. Kane—only periodically distracted from his detecting by his attraction to a woman he meets at Rejoice—quickly learns that Faith wasn't representative of her conservative religious community. A budding feminist with Ivy League ambitions, she also had a sideline income, $500 a week, deposited in a pseudonymous bank account. While Doogan telegraphs the solution to the riddle of Faith's disappearance, engaging, lucid prose more than compensates. *(Aug.)*
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

### From Booklist

*Starred Review* A white-knuckle flight in a bush plane over the Alaskan wilderness jump-starts this debut novel, establishing both the unforgiving setting and the desperate resolve of the main character. Nik Kane spent 25 years with the Anchorage police, 15 as a detective. He has just been released from a 7-year prison term resulting from a false conviction and is on his own, adrift from the police and from his wife. Kane, forced into private investigation, is headed for Rejoice, a fundamentalist Christian community in the harsh, high desert of the interior. One of the daughters of the Elders, an 18-year-old girl named Faith, has gone missing; no one knows if she has simply broken free from the restrictive life at Rejoice or has met with foul play. This is a richly textured novel on several counts. Kane is achingly well delineated; his struggle to adjust to a much bigger, louder, more confusing world after the confines of prison--and to try to find meaning in a life stripped bare of supports--is gripping. All the exigencies of struggling through an Alaskan winter ring true (Doogan has long been a columnist for the *Anchorage Daily News*), and the portrayal of a religious community that holds both secrets and dangers is fascinating. A top-notch start to a projected mystery series. *Connie Fletcher*
*Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved*

Table of Contents
 
 
“Mike Doogan’s first full-length mystery,
Lost Angel
, kept me up till the wee hours. There is no doubt Doogan can write. This new tale, with its fascinating cast of contrasting characters, simply tells us he can write pretty much whatever he wants to, and do it with style and a convincing voice. Welcome to the mystery community, Mike. More, please.”

Sue Henry, author of
The Refuge
 
“Mike Doogan has taken on a theme as big as Alaska itself—lost Faith, both literally and figuratively—and has done it in this brilliant debut with humor, sincerity, and a love for his characters and his state.
Lost Angel
pulses with realism and a brilliant sense of place. Doogan may have created a new subgenre here: post-modern Alaska noir.”

C. J. Box, author of
In Plain Sight
 
“Doogan really knows the grit and the reality of living in Alaska, and with his first mystery novel,
Lost Angel
, he gives us an involving and hard-edged tale of life on the northern frontier.”
—San Jose Mercury News
 
“Gripping . . . The portrayal of a religious community that holds both secrets and dangers is fascinating. A top-notch start to a projected mystery series.”
—Booklist
(starred review)
 
“[An] auspicious debut . . .
Lost Angel
has all the ear-marks of a successful series.”
—Richmond Times Dispatch
“Alaska’s wide-open beauty gives novelist Mike Doogan a portal to a solid story about people living on the fringe in his promising debut . . . Doogan excels at plot and scenery . . . Nik is a character worth rooting for.”
—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
 
“Former
Anchorage Daily News
columnist Mike Doogan has created a complex character . . . The protagonist initially comes across as a Real Tough Customer but thankfully is much more than that . . . Inside he’s riddled with doubts, sorrows, and fears about the future. In other words, he’s a real human being.”
—Anchorage Daily News
 
“[A] righteously appealing hero and terrific local color.”
—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Engaging, lucid prose.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“Sign me up for the Mike Doogan fan club. This guy can really write.
Lost Angel
is a terrific debut novel.”

James Swain, author of
Deadman’s Bluff
 
“Alaska emerges as a tough, gritty place where danger lurks even in the most unassuming situations. Here’s hoping that first time novelist and
Anchorage Daily News
columnist Mike Doogan will write many more mysteries with Nik Kane, one of the truly engaging new detectives on the scene.”
—Library Journal
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,
South Africa
 
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
 
LOST ANGEL
 
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
 
Copyright © 2006 by Mike Doogan.
 
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eISBN : 978-1-4406-1997-7
 
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design
are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
 
 

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Kathy,
the woman who, thank God,
lets me live with her
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not exist without the efforts of Pat Dougherty, Howard Weaver, and Gretchen Legler, who helped me learn the craft of writing; Dana Stabenow, who strong-armed me into writing mystery fiction; Kim Rich and Sue Henry, who helped me find the way to publication; my agent, Marcy Posner, whose suggestions made this a better book; Tom Colgan, my editor, who shepherded this book, and me, through the process with patience and humor; and, of course, my wife, Kathy, my reader and editor of first, and last, resort.
1
And the Lord God planted a garden, eastward in Eden. . . .
GENESIS 2 : 8
 
 
 
 
 
THE SINGLE-ENGINE BUSH PLANE STAGGERED ACROSS the sky, rocking and rolling on the air currents that rose from the jumbled land below. Nik Kane clenched his teeth and cinched his seat belt even tighter.
“Saint Joseph protect us,” he muttered. Then he smiled. Some things we learn as children never leave us, he thought.
The pilot, who looked barely old enough to shave, gave him a pitying shake of the head.
“Don’t worry, Pops,” the pilot shouted. “These river valleys are always a roller coaster.”
Kane could barely hear him over the engine’s clatter. They had been flying north and east from Anchorage for almost two hours, and the trip included all the things Kane hated about flying in Alaska.
The cabin heater blew gas fumes into the cockpit, which made Kane regret the bacon and eggs he’d had for breakfast, but didn’t raise the subarctic temperature. Kane was wearing high-tech boots, insulated coveralls, and a wool cap, and he was still cold. He had a fat Air Force- surplus fifty-below parka behind his seat, but there was no way he could put it on in the tiny cabin. Unless he shoved the pilot out of the airplane first.
The airplane banged its way through another set of air pockets, lurched sideways, then dropped like it was falling off a table, straightening out again with a jolt that set off a cacophony of shrieks and rattles. Kane’s forefinger stroked the scar that ran from the corner of his left eye to his chin. I’m accumulating quite a collection of nervous habits, he thought.
“That’s some scar,” the pilot said. “How’d you get it?”
Kane gave the pilot a look that made the younger man shrink back in his seat.
“Cut myself shaving,” he said.
“Hey, I didn’t mean nothing,” the pilot said.
“Just fly the plane,” Kane said.
He used the edge of a gloved hand to scrape at the frost on the small window in the passenger door. The washed-out winter landscape below was white, with streaks and patches of brown or gray.
Looking at so much empty space made Kane feel light-headed. I got used to small spaces inside, he thought.
To the right, he could see a flat, snowy, meandering, bluff-lined track that he took to be the Copper River. A little farther along, a smaller river angled away to the left.
“That the Jordan?” he asked, pointing.
“Yeah,” the pilot said sullenly.

Other books

Man in the Shadows by Gordon Henderson
Prelude to Space by Arthur C. Clarke
Five to Twelve by Edmund Cooper
The Significant Seven by John McEvoy
Star Crossed by Alisha Watts
Critical Threshold by Brian Stableford