FRESHEST CATCH FROM ALASKA TASTES OF THRILLS AND MYSTERY

Author: By Robin W. Winks

Date: SUNDAY, July 26, 1998

Page: F2

Section: Books

``The Angels Will Not Care'' (Bantam, $22.95) is, to my taste, Straley's best book. He has a penchant for intriguing titles: ``The Woman Who Married a Bear'' was his debut, followed by ``The Curious Eat Themselves,'' ``The Music of What Happens,'' and ``Death and the Language of Happiness.'' The titles are adaptations (``How poor is the language of happiness,'' wrote Osip Mandelstam; ``The blessed will not care,'' W. H. Auden observed, ``having nothing to hide''), and their import becomes clear only at the end of each book. Straley's protagonist lives in Sitka and, like so many Alaskans, earns his keep doing many different things, though Cecil Younger is mainly a fairly simple private investigator who drinks far too much, has a deeply sad view of life, and rises to quick and penetrating insights into human relationships.

In ``Angels,'' Younger is hired to travel on a cruise ship along the Inland Passage, along with his companion Jane Marie, who will act as a lecturer/naturalist. Great Circle Lines wants to find out why its passengers seem to be dying at an unusual rate, and suspects the owners of the ship the Westward, or the ship's doctor. Younger meets some unusual people, has several nearly transcendent experiences, and discovers that reality is far stranger than any ``death in a deck chair'' formula could suggest. In the end the book is about death, and deciding to die, or deciding not to. Cecil and Jane are given their own opportunity to decide when confronted by a bear in one of the best-described scenes of its kind I have ever read. The atmosphere of a cruise ship is beautifully captured; what's more, so are the people aboard the Westward.

Dana Stabenow has a new book, too: ``Killing Grounds'' (Putnam, $22.95). Summer in Alaska is the time the salmon are caught, and any Alaskan knows all the different types, beginning with the Copper River salmon in the south and moving northward. The catch is valuable and precarious, and fishing is a dangerous business. Kate Shugak, Stabenow's series figure, is working as a deckhand when the body of a fisherman is the catch of the day. Wry observation, a steady pace, and quietly competent writing carry us toward an informative and satisfying conclusion to a mystery that never loses touch with Alaskan reality.

``Raven Stole the Moon'' is Garth Stein's debut novel (Pocket Books, $22). Stein is of Tlingit descent, and the plot turns upon the beliefs of this Native American people. The setting is ``Southeast,'' as Alaskans say -- specifically, Wrangell -- and the story has elements of the supernatural. These would ordinarily drive me away quickly, but Stein writes so deftly, and engages our interest in the disappearance of a 2-year-old boy so carefully, that we hang in there as ``myth'' and ``truth'' are slowly sifted out.

Of course, one doesn't read solely of Alaska while in Alaska. Two other engaging books are Janet Evanovich's ``Four to Score'' (St. Martin's Press, $23.95) and John Gilstrap's ``At All Costs'' (Warner, $24), both excellent for the beach. Evanovich is frequently very funny, and her Stephanie Plum is an appealing figure; working for her cousin, a bail bondsman, Plum not surprisingly meets a number of quirky, unreliable, and often quite unpleasant people. A publicity release that came with my advance review copy declared that a ``national laydown'' would occur in late June, and though this term of art refers only to the date the book goes on sale, I like its suggestion that readers are flat on their backs, drinking cold brews, while reading Evanovich's feisty prose. The story hardly matters -- it is a mere bagatelle, let's face it -- but the company is good fun.

Gilstrap's book is all deadly seriousness. Jake and Carolyn Brighton seem like a typical American couple with a 13-year-old son. In fact, though, they have been living a lie for 14 years. One day, virtually by accident, their identities are blown and they have to flee, with some truly cretinous FBI types in hot pursuit. The Brightons are identified as enviro-terrorists who caused the deaths of 16 of their friends, and though (surprise!) they aren't guilty, they must prove this in the face of constant jeopardy. If the logic of the tale is but a puff of summer breeze, the action is unremitting and the resolution of the problem clear and direct.

Fans of either Janwillem van de Wetering or Robert van Gulik will be pleased to know that the former has written a life of the latter, unsurprisingly called ``Robert van Gulik: His Life His Work.'' The book was first published in 1987, but is now more widely available through Soho Press in paperback ($12). It makes one wish there were more than the 16 Judge Dee mysteries to carry us back into the distant Chinese past. Perhaps a trip to China is in order.