Alaska bush pilot Alex Price was content with his day job flying between the villages of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, until an urgent call from his best friend, the elegant novice bar owner Renaldo, brought him into the city of Anchorage, and into danger. In the early 1970s, Alaska hovered on the edge of the Age of Big Oil. The state and its citizens were still collectively broke, but the smell of money was in the air--and like the smell of blood, it drew predators from far away. Renaldo had no patience with bagmen set to ...
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Alaska bush pilot Alex Price was content with his day job flying between the villages of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, until an urgent call from his best friend, the elegant novice bar owner Renaldo, brought him into the city of Anchorage, and into danger. In the early 1970s, Alaska hovered on the edge of the Age of Big Oil. The state and its citizens were still collectively broke, but the smell of money was in the air--and like the smell of blood, it drew predators from far away. Renaldo had no patience with bagmen set to carry off his bar's profits, and sent them packing (and bleeding) instead; now his life was threatened, and he expected Alex to save the day, or at least find answers to a few important questions: Who were these guys offering "insurance"--or else--to the city's drinking establishments? Was Fairbanks the home base for their troubles, or was it maybe Moscow? And what could the good guys do about it? Then as now, Alaskans will try anything--as long as they don't have to sober up completely first. The embattled Anchorage barkeepers can't agree on much, but they pull together long enough to draft Alex as their own personal combination of Wyatt Earp and Sherlock Holmes. So now all he has to do is prevent Russia, or at least an outlaw offshoot of it, from reclaiming Alaska, or at least its drinking emporiums' earnings--and keep himself, Renaldo, and his colleagues alive and healthy in the process. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it, or die trying... Much of the enjoyment in this tale of merry mayhem and murder (with cocktails) stems from its underlying authenticity: author Don G. Porter knows his Alaska, from the bar scene of forty years' back to the ins and outs of piloting small planes over empty northern territory.
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