An inspector combs Alaska for a missing person in this fourth installment of Buell’s mystery series.

Annie Brewster, who leads the Alaska Investigation Bureau’s Cold Case Unit, handpicks her team’s latest case: Rayleen Urgen has been missing for four years, ever since cops discovered her abandoned car in 2000. Though a report had been filed, Rayleen’s husband Clifford Urgen apparently didn’t believe she was missing. He was in prison at that time for the 1996 robbery of a gold dealer who employed Rayleen. Clifford was released a couple of months ago—unlike the other robber, his father, who’s still incarcerated. The AIB unit, including Annie’s partner Arturo Feliz, considers various possibilities: the thieves didn’t return all the loot, Rayleen was in on the heist, or maybe she was the victim of a seemingly random crime. They interview numerous people and scour for evidence (including inside Rayleen’s car), hoping something will lead them to the missing woman, wherever she may be. This installment in Buell’s series, like those that precede it, is a deliberately-paced procedural. Annie is hyper-focused, laying out aspects of the case like puzzle pieces and wisely separating what the inspectors know from what’s still unknown. This entails intermittent recaps as well as lists of the unit’s developing theories (is Rayleen hiding from someone?). Alaska makes for an indelible setting, as the cold climate necessitates “those ice thingies you strap on your boots” and is impossible to predict. The narrative sticks closely to Annie’s perspective; readers don’t know much more than she does, following her methodical investigation as she digs up compelling evidence or makes a startling connection. It all gives rise to a resolution that’s both deftly deployed and convincing.

The returning series star shines once again in this slow-burn mystery.

In Buell’s thriller, a cold-case inspector investigates a pattern of missing Indigenous girls in Alaska.

Dr. Bethene Dubrow, a psychologist working as a consultant in Analoon, a small village in the hinterlands of Alaska, makes an alarming discovery about female students who have gone missing over a span of years. Annie Brewster, lead inspector with the Cold Case Unit of the Alaska Investigation Bureau, and her partner, Arturo Feliz, take up the case when this information reaches them; they’re grimly certain the peculiar pattern can’t be explained by random chance. The situation is affectingly depicted by the author: rationally, “the lack of girls in three of the five village schools, other than teachers’ children, [must have been] a coincidence. It didn’t feel that way: the great mentor in the sky said there were no coincidences.” The vanishing girls are Indigenous, which adds obstacles to their inquiries, given the culturally closed world from which they come. Annie and Arturo, undaunted, doggedly chase down leads and start to uncover a grisly picture of organized human trafficking that appears to involve a school principal, Alan Prold, rumored to have had inappropriate sexual relations with young village girls. Additionally, Octavia Tallignuit, a young Indigenous girl who was reported to have been drowned by her family in 1990, mysteriously turns up dead years later.

With remarkable lucidity and great suspense, Buell unpacks this densely complicated case, in which unalloyed evil tragically intersects with youthful innocence. Her characters are just as complex as the plot—they’re tightly woven personalities, too dynamic to ignore or be fully understood. Annie is the most memorable character among the cast, a remarkably perceptive detective motivated in part by her own residual trauma from sexual assault. The author sensitively portrays a strange feature of the crimes—they’re basically perpetrated in plain sight, yet conducted with relative impunity. Without offering any simplistic or didactic commentary, Buell sketches a picture of how that can occur—how amoral people can avoid the interference of the decent. At the heart of the book is the peculiar nature of cold cases, and the ways in which they stymie the normal methods of investigation. “In cases proceeding from a missing person, the victim was the investigation. You couldn’t ‘see’ the crime. There often was no obvious evidence, in the classic sense. You were seeking a ghost. The daily habits of the victim became the path to follow, moving out in concentric relationship circles until you found someone who knew something.” The entire book is written in this manner—the prose is impressively clear and concise, as is the way in which the author’s unsentimental, even journalistic descriptions accrue a power of their own, unforced by writerly exertions. Any book that handles the abuse of children courts mawkish melodrama. Buell artfully avoids this trap, and the result is an exceedingly thoughtful and dramatically moving novel.

A stirring crime story with real psychological depth.

In this mystery series entry, an Alaskan police squad dives into a decades-old homicide case with few clues to go on.

The Alaska Investigation Bureau’s Cold Case Unit often concentrates on “solvables”—cases that could be easily closed, for example, with new DNA tests. However, Annie Brewster wants her team to proactively solve a more difficult case, so they focus on a case from 20 years ago. The corpses of two Indigenous Inupiat men—Bertram Tusroyuk and his cousin Freddy Nanatooluk—were found wrapped in sheets, and an unidentified White man’s body was discovered stuffed inside a mattress. Astonishingly, the investigators back then didn’t consider these to be murders, as the bodies showed no signs of trauma, though the cops did collect some items they found near the mattress as evidence. Annie and the team, including new partner Arturo Felize, have just a few clues, including a mysterious key and what appears to be a partial page of a book. It’s up to them to gather DNA and prints; interview relevant people such as the cop who inspected the original scene; and identify the John Doe. Annie surmises that the cases are murders and that their killer may have murdered others. As in the first installment, Just Politics (2021), Nancy Buell, with Bill Buell, develops an assiduously detailed investigation. Annie picks apart and pieces together evidence until it makes sense; and even when the team has a suspect, she keeps working for the strongest possible case. The authors include spoiler-heavy nods to the earlier novel as well as a separate investigation into missing girls, which stays mostly on the back burner. Alaska, in this book, is shown to be about much more than snow; the narrative unfolds in the spring and summer as Annie passes lush greenery and enjoys breezy walks with her beloved, Fred, and their dog, Bones: “Annie didn’t think about anything but the dog, the green trees, the creek that glistened in the afternoon sun below them, and the amazing mountains in the background.” Despite a gratifying resolution, some plot threads hint at another installment.

A densely plotted, absorbing murder mystery set in a vibrant landscape.

An Alaska sleuth must solve a murder case with frustratingly few leads in a mystery series opener from Nancy Buell with Bill Buell.

Special Investigator Annie Brewster’s newest case is a body dump at the Juneau (garbage) Dump. The Alaska Investigation Bureau has sent Annie to assist local cops with their inquiry into Commissioner Richard Grossman’s death. How he died isn’t entirely certain; there’s a gunshot to the neck and a knife wound in the back. But Annie and the Juneau Police Department surmise the murder happened elsewhere despite incessant rain that’s washed away possible clues. No shortage of people might have welcomed the death of Grossman, especially his employees, who saw him as a bully and worse. While the savvy inspector has theories about how the killer took out Grossman without any witnesses, no evidence points Annie to a solid suspect. This tough case begins in the late ’90s and gradually turns cold as the world heads into the new millennium. Annie, however, may get the break she needs when she teams up with both an FBI profiler and an experienced detective who has an affinity for cold cases. A former resident of Barrow, Alaska, Nancy Buell (Time Share Addendum, 2021, etc.) delivers a well-written story and realistically portrays a murder investigation. The novel often comes across as a procedural; Annie repeatedly scrutinizes case details even when she has nothing new. While this showcases her tenacity, it also makes for a leisurely paced, somewhat prolonged narrative given that readers learn early on how the murder transpired (with an inkling as to the culprit’s identity) and must wait for Annie to slowly catch up. Still, Annie is immensely likable; this investigation begets a separate assault case that she wraps up with proficiency. Moreover, her devoted lover, Fred, and their springer spaniel, Bones, help alleviate the gloomy murder plot. Notwithstanding the possibility of a welcome Annie-centric series, this book ends on a relatively disappointing note.

A sublime female gumshoe elevates this sober, measured whodunit.