The Big Empty
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Police Chief Nathan Active investigates a plane crash out in Alaska’s Big Empty—and what he finds there casts suspicion of murder on several locals in his small town of Chukchi.
Evie Kavoonah, a young mother-to-be, and her fiancé, Dr. Todd Brenner, are on a flight over the Brooks Range when their bush plane runs out of gas and hits a ridge, instantly killing them both. Chukchi police chief Nathan Active doubts he’ll find anything amiss when his close friend, Cowboy Decker, asks him to look into the possibility of foul play. Evie was like a daughter to Cowboy, who trained her to fly, and he insists there’s no way his protégée made a fatal mistake that day. Nathan reluctantly plays along and discovers that Cowboy’s instincts are correct—the malfunction that led to the crash was carefully planned, and several people in the village have motives for targeting the pair.
Meanwhile, Nathan’s wife, Gracie, is pregnant, but so scarred by memories of domestic abuse that she isn’t sure she should have the baby. Nathan must support her and their adopted daughter, Nita, while managing an increasingly complex and dangerous murder case.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Jones's intriguing sixth outing for Native Alaskan public safety director Nathan Active (after 2016's Tundra Kill), the first in the series to be coauthored with Watts (The Frayer), Nathan's bush pilot friend, Cowboy Decker, persuades him to look into the deaths of Evie Kavoonah and her physician fianc , Todd Brenner. The couple were killed after the Cessna Evie had been piloting smashed into a mountain, a tragedy that federal investigators concluded was due to pilot error. Despite his skepticism, Nathan agrees to travel with Cowboy to the site of the wreckage, where they discover evidence of sabotage. Meanwhile, Nathan and his wife, Grace, are expecting their first child, a development that will complicate their relationship with Grace's teenage daughter, Nita. Nita's father is Grace's father, who raped her years before her marriage to Nathan. Though the whodunit story line may be unexceptional, it's buttressed by the family melodrama and the authors' insights into the culture of Alaska's indigenous peoples.
