Better To Rest - Softcover

Like a spectral presence, a hand clutching a gold piece emerges from the ice of a calving glacier near the small town where Alaska state trooper Liam Campbell is investigating the brutal murder of a 74-year-old woman. The hand belonged to an army soldier killed with his crewmates in the crash of the World War II army plane entombed by the glacier a half century ago. Although it takes several long and occasionally tedious pages before Campbell and pilot Wy Chouinard make the connection between Lydia Tompkins's murder, the source of her family's mysterious wealth, and the secret mission that led to the crash of the old C-47, fans of this series won't mind. A skillful chronicler of Alaska's extraordinary landscape and its eccentric inhabitants, Dana Stabenow does a competent job with a plot that lacks much drama or suspense; what little there is comes from Liam and Wy's on-again, off-again romance. --Jane Adams

Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage and raised on a 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and found it in writing. Her first crime fiction novel, A Cold Day for Murder, won an Edgar award. Her first thriller, Blindfold Game, hit the New York Times bestseller list.