Still mourning Old Sam, Kate inherits his homestead property in the Park, where hot springs are located. Old Sam sets in motion a search by Kate for an old religious relic (a Russian icon with healing properties), and Kate is clobbered repeatedly as others try to get to the prizes first. Meanwhile, Jim Chopin's father dies and he has to fly to California to discover buried secrets about his own family. ( )

Possible spoilers*
Maybe the title should have been Whack a Mole Kate. Is there anyone not trying to hit her ? Yeah Kate get hit, no spoiler there I promise. Kate is in Alaska dealing with Sam's death and Jim is in CA dealing with his father's death. Each has dark discoveries ahead, and they must deal separately.
Old Sam, oh he will be missed. That crusty old man was a fun hard character. He passed and left Kate as executor of his will. He also left her one hell of a mystery or two or three to solve. To bad there is somebody else out there who wants some of Sam's stuff and is will to take Kate out to get it. While she's trekking back and forth across Alaska trying to find answers, Jim is in So Cal with his mother, ex-girlfriend and his own mystery left by a dead man.
I loved Old Sam's history. Finally we got to know him and where he came from. What a fabulous character, what a tangled life. Jim, his story is heartbreaking and eye opening. ( )

“Although Not Dead” was a wonderful, spirit-raising read. This is Kate Shugak at her best, following a quest, solving puzzles, exploring her family’s past, using her wits and her strength and her courage to take on the bad guys with only Mutt at her side.

This is the eighteenth book in this series. Some series start to feel written out at this stage: repeating ideas, keeping relationships so static that they start to feel like caricatures, becoming dull and predictable. None of this is true about the Kate Shugak series. The books keep getting better because Dana Stabenow’s stories are character-driven and she lets her characters, ALL of her characters, grow and change so that my understanding of Kate’s world becomes richer but, just like real life, never feels complete.

The plot of “Although Not Dead” is driven by the bequests of two dead men: Old Sam, who leaves all his property to Kate, along with a one-line instruction that sets her on a path to discover more about Old Sam’s past than she might want to know, and Jim Shugak’s father who leaves him an enigmatic gift that will change Jim’s understanding of his own childhood. Kate’s intense, sometimes combative, sometimes deferential, but always loving, relationship with Old Sam contrasts starkly with Jim’s emotionally barren childhood, the sterility of which is illustrated by the fact that Jim was at a sleep-over with friends before he discovered that parents hugged their children.

In previous books, including “The Singing Of The Dead” and “A Taint In The Blood” Dana Stabenow has made the history of Alaska as much a character in the novel as the dramatic landscape is but it has never worked so seamlessly as in “Although Not Dead”, perhaps because, this time, the history is seen directly through the eyes of Old Sam, one of my favourite characters in the series. We see The Aunties when they were young and had yet to earn the honorific. We learn how Sam came to own the Freya and why he spent so much time away from home. We come to understand his rugged independence and some of his loneliness. In some senses, “Although Not Dead” is like a wake for Old Sam. It gave me a sense of completion, off saying goodbye to him without forgetting him.

Kate and Jim are apart for most of the novel. This has two interesting consequences: it allows Kate to be reminded of her own strength and independence and it confirms to both of them that they are better together than apart.

There was a slapstick element to the book that I also enjoyed. Kate gets hit on the head so many times in this novel that she might as well be in a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon but it stays just this side of credible. I love the scene where she finally confronts her enemies and adds another chapter to the Kate Shugak legend by the way she drags them to justice.

This was such a good read that my only regret is that I have only two books left in the series. I’m rationing myself to one a month so that I can delay the inevitable withdrawal symptoms. ( )

There are a lot of story lines going on -- many characters. It's hard to keep them all straight. In the end, the whodunit was not just one person, nor one motive. I suppose that was Stabenow's intent. Oh, and the plot: Kate is the cleaning up Old Sam's affairs and runs into many, many bad guys, whacks on the head and general mischief. Meanwhile, Chopper Jim is cleaning up his father's affairs on the outside and finds out that he really does like Kate very much. Satisfying Shugak story, if somewhat confusing at the end. ( )

There are a lot of story lines going on in this book and I'm not sure she brought them all to a satisfying conclusion but I always love the Kate Shugak series. ( )