7 Compulsively Readable Mysteries (for the Crazy-Smart Reader)

What would you do if you found an infant boy frozen  in the woods? Edie Kiglatuk is faced with this dilemma in M.J. McGrath’s gripping Alaskan mystery. While visiting Anchorage to support her ex-husband as he competes in the Iditarod, the annual 1,112-mile dogsled race along the western Bering Sea coast, Edie finds a boy’s body wrapped in a blanket. The police immediately pin the death on a religious cult called the Dark Believers, an offshoot of a Russian Orthodox sect, but Edie thinks there is more to the story. She starts knocking on doors and searching for answers, which introduces her to the state’s corrupt politicians and quite a few Alaskans with a lot to hide. McGrath’s characters are both motivated and ruthless. It is Edie’s cunning intelligence and quick decision-making that keep the story moving forward. The closer Edie gets to the truth, the more her friends question why she just won’t settle down and let the police do their job. "Seems to me you got reason to be chasing this thing, I mean something you’re not talking about," her friend Derek Palliser tells her. And he’s right. Edie has a secret that morally and emotionally drives her to solve the case. But it’s not until she goes back to her Eskimo roots that she finds exactly who’s to blame.