Nathan Active is a white-raised Alaska state trooper living in the native city of his parents, Chukchi (which is fictitious). Being native Alaskan by birth but white by nurture makes for a good opportunity to work cultural bits into the story. And there’s a lot of it.
The crime revolves around an Eskimo mummy called Uncle Frosty returned from the Smithsonian to the local tribe under the Indian Graves Act. The head of the city council wants to put it on display in a tourist museum, but he’s found dead with Uncle Frosty’s harpoon run through him. Suspicion falls onto a local who wanted to leave Uncle Frosty out on the tundra to be scavenged the way the Inupiat used to deal with their dead.
The mummy isn’t even that old. Found around 1920, the Smithsonian figure out Uncle Frosty was only 30 or so years old. This is not Kennewick man. Uncle Frosty is young enough to have known surviving descendants.
It’s a pretty good mystery for the first 2/3 of the book while Nathan Active figures out who did it. The last 1/3 turns into suspense as Nathan Active tracks the killer which is also pretty good, but does have a few moments where I rolled my eyes. Though not at the daring hovering airplane trick. That actually made me want to go look it up. The short version is: light airplane + low stall speed + high wind = hovering airplane.
The best part is how much Inupiat culture is worked in. Mostly current day culture, but the old timers get the opportunity to tell stories from just before white men came. The great thing about fiction as opposed to a non-fiction anthropologist look is that all the cultural stuff feels natural, rather than just reading it separately. It gives the story context.
Title: Shaman Pass
Author: Stan Jones
Cover creator: Charyl L. Cipriani (designer) / Knud Rasmussen (photographer)
Series: Nathan Active; 2
Imprint / publisher: Soho
Format: Paperback
Length: 274 p.
Publication date: January 2005
ISBN-10: 1-56947-413-3
Subject: Police — Alaska — Fiction
Subject: Inupiat — Fiction
Subject: Alaska — Fiction
LC classification: PS3560.O539 S48 2003
