Village of the Ghost Bears (2009)

You can almost hear the wind screaming across miles of bleak tundra and frozen lakes in Village of the Ghost Bears, the fourth outing for Alaska state trooper and native Inupiat Nathan Active, who's still posted in the godforsaken Arctic Circle village of Chukchi. Stan Jones delivers a finely laddered plot — involving deadly arson at a local recreation center and a faceless body discovered at a remote campsite — but the real fun, as always, lies in the dozens of mini-lessons he gives on hardscrabble Alaskan life, covering everything from the illegal trade in polar-bear bladders to the description of a potent indigenous chewing tobacco made from burnt birch-tree fungus. A-

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