KATE SHUGAK is a native Aleut working as a private investigator in Alaska. She's 5 foot 1 inch tall, carries a scar that runs from ear to ear across her throat and owns half-wolf, half-husky dog named Mutt. Resourceful, strong-willed, defiant, Kate is tougher than your average heroine - and she needs to be to survive the worst the Alaskan wilds can throw at her. A GRAVE DENIED. When Len Dreyer's body is discovered, frozen solid, in an ice cave beneath a remote glacier with a hole from a shotgun blast in his chest, no one had even noticed that he had been missing for months. Alaska State Trooper Jim Chopin asks Kate to help him dig into Dreyer's background, in the hope of finding some motive for his murder. She takes the case, mindful of the need for gainful employment as she copes with Johnny, the teenage boy in her care and a constant reminder of his father, her dead lover. Little does she imagine that by trying to provide for him she just might be putting him in the path of danger.