Red Line

Alaskan aviator Taylor Morgan enjoys her job working for Lifeline Air because she feels she is making a contribution to society. She flies a twin engine plane whose usual passengers are sick or injured individuals from remote villages needing to go to urban medical centers. While on vacation, to pay back a favor to the company that provided her with her start, Taylor accepts a job that returns her to her own stomping grounds in Bethel. The job is simply transporting supplies and people from one village to another. As she flies among the Yup'ik villages, she notices the large number of alcohol related tragedies in an area that is supposedly dry. She concludes that a gang is illegally smuggling alcohol into this forbidden zone. Taylor decides to ferret out the identities of the culprits even though her adversaries will kill her to remain anonymous. RED LINE, the second work in the breathtaking Morgan series, is as wonderful a work as the opener, DEAD STICK. The panoramic beauty, the stark wilderness, and the huge geographic landscape appear real due to Megan Mallory Rust's ability as a descriptive story teller. Readers will guess who the villains are early in the tale, but the entertainment lies in observing Taylor track them down even as they try to eliminate her. Ms. Rust achieves the level of excellence attained by Dana Stabenow and Sue Henry in providing the audience a superb look at the last American frontier within a winning who-done-it.Harriet Klausner