Northern Lights

When Baltimore Detective Ignatius Burke decides to take a job as the new police chief for an isolated Alaskan town, he knows its sheer lunacy. That seems appropriate since Lunacy is the name of the town. Nate quickly finds that Lunacy isn't quite what he expected. The town is full of characters and, while colorful, most of them are harmless. As winter sets in and the blizzards start to fly, Nate finds purpose in the everyday dramas of this small community: fender benders, rowdy drunks, domestic squabbles, and the like. After Baltimore, where he was shot and his partner was killed in the line of duty, an event that still weighs on him and threatens to plunge him into depression, these mundane problems are a welcome chore. Nate also finds himself drawn to a woman, not Charlene, the proprietess of the town lodge, who comes onto him at every chance, but Meg, the forthright bush pilot. There's a problem there too; Meg is Charlene's daughter. Charlene, an aging beauty, is having a hard time letting her youth go and has a history of trying to steal her daughter's lovers. These things are drama enough for a man recovering from depression, but when three boys go missing on a mountain, Nate's life gets even more complicated. When the boys are rescued, a body is discovered in the ice cave where they sheltered. This body wasn't just another hapless climber; an ice ax is buried in his chest. It also isn't just a random tourist- its the body of Meg's father, who disappeared in 1988 when Meg was only thirteen. Now Nate has to solve a decades old murder and find out which "Lunatic" is not quite so harmless.

Nora Roberts has a gift for writing everyday characters who readers can recognize and identify with, but who are also a little more glamorous, a little larger-than-life. Northern Lights is one of her better romantic suspense stories. The characters are lively and quirky, with a slight Northern Exposure feel. Ignatius, who is a broken man when he arrives in Lunacy, stirs back to life in this stark setting. His romance with Meg is fun and the mystery of who killed her father is compelling. Parts of that mystery are revealed through journal entries that the dead man wrote while climbing that mountain with two other companions, whom he nicknamed Han and Darth (he was Luke, of course). Its intriguing to look at the present-day townsfolk and try to figure out which two climbed with him, killed him, and left him there. Anyone hoping to while-away an hour or to with a good story can't go wrong with Roberts and Northern Lights is perfect for a cold winter night.