Today’s Nathan Active flashquote is from the first chapter of SHAMAN PASS, the second book in the series.

Like any good mystery, SHAMAN PASS opens with the discovery of a body killed under mysterious circumstances—in this case, at a fishing camp far out on the Arctic sea ice.

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“Should I take it out?”

The paramedic from the Chukchi Public Safety Department dropped to her knees beside the mortal remains of Victor Solomon, then looked up at Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active and repeated the question with her eyes.

Active snapped the cap into place over the lens of his Nikon, tucked the camera inside his parka, closed the zipper, put his mittens on, and considered the paramedic’s question as he gazed around Victor Solomon’s sheefish camp on the ice of Chukchi Bay. Active hated moments like this even more than most moments at a death scene. Instinct told him the proceedings ought to be as solemn as the event itself, the questions as profound as the fact of a human soul moving on to the hereafter, if there was one.

Instead, it always came down to this kind of niggling decision: Should the shaft protruding approximately four feet from Victor Solomon’s chest be left in place? That way, the pathologist who would do the autopsy could remove it himself, noting whatever needed to be noted about its relationship to the wound and Victor’s death.

Or should it be removed to facilitate the body’s transportation by snowmachine and akhio from Victor’s sheefishing camp across eight miles of sea ice to the village of Chukchi? Active turned and looked. The town was just discernible through the milky air as a line of dark rectangles on the horizon.

Vera Jackson, the paramedic, pointed at the fiberglass akhio hitched to the back of her snowmachine, a blue-and-black Arctic Cat. “He’ll get a lot of bouncing around on that. It might make the wound bigger. Or the harpoon might fall out and get lost.”
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#alaska #murdermystery

Shaman Pass