Northern Lights

IF YOU LIKE NORA ROBERTS YOU WILL LOVE THIS BOOK. AS USUAL A GREAT STORY MIXTURE OF ROMANCE AND MYSTERY. IF YOU HAVE NEVER READ NORA BEFORE YOU WILL LOVE THIS BOOK AND WANT MORE. I HAVE NEVER BEEN DISAPPOINTED WITH A NORA ROBERTS BOOK!

What a cracker of a book and what a thrilling movie it would make! Nate Burke is a mentally fragile cop who was present when his partner was fatally wounded and he himself wounded. A part of him keeps insisting that he could have done more to save his partner, even though his real self knows that he did all that was possible. Around the same time as the killing, his marriage fell apart and left him hovering on the brink of a complete mental breakdown. In an effort to keep himself stable, he transfers, as Chief of Police, to Lunacy, a tiny, aptly named town in Alaska. The town is peopled with characters straight out of a novel, most of them likeable, some crazies, some surlies and one in particular, most lovable. Meg Galloway is the local bush pilot, picking up and dropping off passengers, packages and supplies in her tiny plane. Meg's father was a larger than life, Errol Flynn type character who supposedly just took off 16 years previously, so when his body is discovered in an ice cave on the nearby mountain, finding his murderer becomes a personal issue for Nate, who by this time, is heavily involved with Meg. This is such a visual book with wonderful descriptions of what must be an incredibly beautiful state, and beautifully written descriptions of the Northern Lights, that breathtaking phenomena of the Artic skies.

What a delighful read! A new police chief comes to the town of Lunacy, Alaska and he is an Outsider! Ignatius Burke has to forge through the people of the area who are very leery of him, including his own deputies. Nate learns about the accident-causing moose, the incredible four foot snowfalls and long lonely nights of winter. Meg, a fearless bush pilot, catches his eye and eventually his heart. Then a series of events begin to occur starting with three young men from the town are lost and injured in a reckless winter climb which brings up a long ago dead body from one of the caves high up. Nate's investigation finds lots of hidden knowledge about the the town and its inhabitants. The book relates loads of information about Alaska, its wildlife and its seasons.

After reading all the other reviews (I read the book before reading the reviews, thank heavens, as I might not have bought it if I had read the reviews first!) I am completely puzzled at most of the reviews. First of all, I was thinking that I could have done with a little less of the sexy love scenes, yet these other reviewers are complaining that there aren't enough, or that they aren't hot enough, I"m not really sure what their complaints are. I disagree with both complaints, as there were several pages dedicated to each happenstance of Meg and Nate's couplings, and they were graphic enough for anyone that wasn't looking for porn. We weren't supposed to feel sympathetic toward Charlene at the beginning of the story, she wasn't a very likeable character, it took the unfolding of her background and circumstances, what made her the way she was, to turn her into a sympthetic character. She still didn't ring any bells with me, but everyone reacts to life's blows in different ways and I am sure that there are some women in real life who would react to her man leaving her nearly penniless, with a small child to raise, as immaturely as Charlene's character did. She does change as the story evolves, and the mystery here that leaves us hanging is how she raised a daughter with such character and integrity. Meg is a little too independent for my tastes, but the Women's Movement may account for that, I'm old fashioned and not into the W.M., I like having men (one man)take care of me, but understand that there are women out there who feel entirely different, and as Meg is of a younger generation, I accept the character as written. So we accept Meg the way she is, feisty and independent, as Ms. Roberts portrayed her. What is wrong with that? It is the author's prerogrative to form her character's as she sees them, and wants them to be. The main part of the story for me, and the reason I bought the book, was the murder mystery, and none of the earlier reviews even touches on that, only on the romance between Meg and Nate! If romance was all I was looking for when I paid the high price that I did for this book, I would have spent less and bought a Harlequin Romance Novel! It was the deaths and who was committing them that kept me riveted with my nose in this book and could barely put it down until the unveiling of the coldhearted murderer. I must say that I had an inkling of who it was about half way through, but wasn't sure until the actual showdown. The suspense kept me reading until the very end, and unable to put it down even when the wee hours of the morning told me to give it up until the next day, but the suspense overruled common sense and I kept at it until the end! The book is well worth the price I paid, as far as I am concerned, and I like it better than the supernatural books that Ms. Roberts has written a lot of in the past few years. It was completely realistic, and her description of the Alaskan Northern Lights is the best that I have ev