Nothing Gold Can Stay

This was my first Dana Stebenow book and I really enjoyed the story line of this novel but I wish I had bought the book instead of listening to it on cassette. The readers voice is, at first, like nails on a chalkboard and I almost stopped listening before I got started. I'm honestly not sure if it got better or I just got used to it. I also found it annoying that the book jacket information was read at the beginning of the tape instead of at the end and that the title and authors name was repeated (along with a few lines of the story) at the beginning of each side of every tape. On the last tape it sounded like the reader was very tired or trying to stretch out the words to fit the tape. While I highly recommend this book I absolutely do not recommend buying the book on tape.

Dana Stabenow's wild, unforgiving Alaskan landscape almost takes a backseat to the riveting serial murder plot in the Edgar Award-winning writer's third Trooper Liam Campbell outing. Campbell is getting his life back together in the remote village of Newenham, breaking in his ambitious new subordinate Diana Prince and cementing his precarious relationship with bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard and her adopted son, when murder shatters the peace.First it's the postmistress of an isolated outpost, then a gold prospector, his wife gone missing. But when a third body turns up on Wyanet's route, Campbell has to suspect a serial rampage. The narrative moves between Campbell's point of view and that of the murderer and his victims, keeping the reader a few steps ahead of the cop, establishing a pattern that Campbell must crack before more people die.Plenty of suspense keeps the pace lively and numerous subplots concerning Wy's son's abusive birthmother, the beaten teenaged wife of a local politician, out-of-town visitors, and the hunting, trapping and drinking activities of the native population supply pathos and humor, hope, despair and a richly detailed background. Stabenow keeps getting better.

I have just finished reading this book and I am left with a feeling...I want another Liam Campbell book to read NOW. This book was fantastic. Dana Stabenow is hitting her stride; her last three books have been such great reading. I highly recommend both the Liam Campbell and the Kate S. series.

At one time, law enforcement official Liam Campbell felt he had it all. He loved and was loved by his wife and son, and enjoyed his work even as he seemed on his way to the top. However, his world collapsed with the deaths of his spouse and child, which led to his failure as a cop. Exiled to remote Newenham, the Alaska State Trooper begins to recover his life, especially with his hot and cold relationship with local Wyanet Chouinard. Everything is quiet on the northern frontier. However, the calm ends when someone murders the postmistress of a nearby village in an apparent robbery that turned ugly. Other homicides follow along with several disappearances. Liam, ably helped by his assistant Diana Prince, begins to investigate a crime spree that seems linked to events over two decades old. With the Kate Shugak and Liam Campbell novels, Dana Stabenow owns the Alaskan mystery. The current tale, the third Campbell story (see SO SURE OF DEATH and FIRE AND ICE) is a fabulous regional novel that brings the final American frontier to vivid life. The story line is exciting, has a touch of love in the air, but never loses sight of its prime theme, the police procedural investigation in a remote area. Liam is a tremendous star still struggling but clearly improving to regain his equilibrium. The support cast adds the touch of genuineness and reality to the locale, the lead character, and the mystery.Harriet Klausner

While delivering the mail to small outposts in Alaska, pilot Wyanet Chouinard discovers the body of a postmistress. Wy's lover, Trooper Liam Campbell, has to investigate the murder and also support Wy through a personal crisis involving Wy's adopted son's birth mother and a court order that the woman has allowing her to see her son. Friends of Wy and Liam take the boy to stay at their remote fish camp along with a young girl who has been the victim of domestic violence. Meanwhile, a gold miner has also been murdered and his wife is missing. Liam searches for the wife in connection with the two murders, but the reader knows that the woman has been abducted by the real killer. Yet another body is found and the potential for violence escalates as a winter storm comes on and the kidnapped woman escapes her captor and heads for help in the same area where the fish camp is located. Wy realizes her son may be in peril because the trail of bodies is leading closer to the fish camp. She and Liam (who hates to fly) take off in the storm. The story reaches a dramatic climax at the cabin at the fish camp as several story lines converge. Stabenow makes the reader care about all the characters and especially the victims of the killer.