More of a set of disjointed dramas than a crime novel. It should tell you something that the author previously published 20 crime/mystery novels and still doesn't seem to know the difference between an automatic and a machine gun. Some other minor errors ( )

Kate Shugak #15. One of the Park's worst residents, Louis Deem, is exonerated of a murder he committed and is then implicated in the murders of Roadhouse Bernie's wife and son Fitz. Kate's "adopted" son, Johnny Morgan witnesses the double murder and identifies Deem as the culprit, but there is no supporting evidence. Deem is murdered and both Jim Chopin and Kate have to deal with their mixed feelings about finding the killer. ( )

Kate, Jim, Aunties and several park rats will never be the same. This book was another wowzers read, shocking moments, horror filled seconds and hours of circling sharks. There is a tick of a man in the park, he spreads death and pain. The whole park knows it but has little recourse to stop him. He's bad, sickening, I wanted him dead from the first meeting of him in the book and he gets worse. Good people get killed, innocent young lives ended, the tick or ? You want more read the books from book 1. These series is the best.
I do worry for Kate and Jim. Secrets can wedge and infect after a time. I hope they are spilled before ti comes to that ( )

Although "A Deeper Sleep" is the fifteenth Kate Shugak novel, it caught me by surprise from the beginning and kept surprising me throughout the book.

The first surprise was that "A Deeper Sleep" was narrated by Bernadette Dunne, rather than Marguerite Gavin, who has been the narrator for all the other books. I thought Bernadette Dunne did a great job. She caught every nuance of the story, but, after listening to fourteen novels with Marguerite Gavin's voice in my ear, she just didn't sound like Kate.

After a while, I began to wonder if this change was an acknowledgement of the nature of the book itself. Kate is front and centre in most of the books in the series, but not in this one. Here, she is no more important to the main plot than her state trooper lover, Jim Chopin. Most of the time, we are not in Kate's head. There are many scenes she's not in. It's as if the Park, Kate's tribe, her family and friends are over-shadowing Kate, expecting her to behave in certain ways and do certain things not just because of who she is but who they expect her to become. Kate's period of mourning is over. She's been allowed time to play cat and mouse with Jim Chopin's self-image. Now she must start to become the Elder her grandmother meant her to be.

Yet Kate's evolution, even her playful and sexually charged relationship with Jim, are background features to this novel, linking it to the rest of the series but not the focus of the reader's attention. That place is reserved for the monster of the book: Louis Deem.

Deem lives in the Park. It is well-known that he seduces and breaks women and it suspected that he kills them. They come to him voluntarily, even eagerly. When they come to understand who he is, they embrace death as a gift of release. So how has Deem survived in the Park? Why has Kate, normally a law unto herself, not done something about him? It turns out that she's tried. She's assaulted him, threatened him, even had him arrested on fairly solid evidence. None of it worked. Deem is smart, manipulative, in control of his own hate and, perhaps most scary of all, is not afraid of Kate Shugak.

When the latest failed case against Deem is followed by brutal murders and whispers of child rape, something has to be done. Yet it is not primarily Kate who does it, which is the main surprise of the book.

This is a solid story about a predator thriving in the midst of a community that seems powerless to protect itself. It's about what that threat does to the people who have to watch it without being able to stop it. It explores the moral ambiguity of taking the law into your own hands and what meeting violence with violence does to those who act. It looks at the difference between being evil and doing bad things. It is a book filled with grief and waste and impotent anger.

It seemed to me that "A Deeper Sleep" signals a change in the Park. The evils that are done here will have consequences for many of the people in the Park. The context Kate is operating in is about to change. What is being asked of her is about to change. Kate herself comes out of this book innocent of wrong-doing but I had a strong sense that this will not save her.

"A Deeper Sleep" reminded me of "Playing With Fire", the first book in the series where Kate was unable to make things right in the face of a more powerful evil. It is a reminder that the world is full of threats, that actions have consequences, and that doing the right thing the wrong way always costs.

I'm rationing myself to one Kate Shugak book a month at the moment but I'm looking forward to book sixteen in July. Much as I enjoyed Bernadette Dunne's narration, I hope that Marguerite Gavin is back for the next one and that Kate is at its heart, dealing with her new situation. ( )

Native Aleut and P.I. Kate Shugak has been working on a case involving the murder of a woman by her husband. Louis Deem has been the subject of investigations before, and he's never been convicted. When he's found not guilty, Kate and Jim and the rest of Nilniltna, Alaska, are certain that a man has gotten away with murder and that its only a matter of time before he tries again. A few weeks later a woman and her son are shot, the victims of an apparent robbery. But this time, Kate and Jim have a witness, and they're not going to let Deem get away again.

This was a somewhat dark story with a criminal that was easy to hate. He kept getting away with murdering his wives and then going on to the next woman and everyone in town knew it. The people of Nilniltna were a bit rowdy and quirky with bits of native Aleut culture mixed in making it an interesting place. There were some interesting twists in the book but a lack of character development kept me from really caring about Kate and Jim. Overall, a decent story but not as engaging as I expected. ( )