![]() ![]() She thinks nothing of destroying evidence or going out on her own to investigate. ![]() A chain smoker, fiercely protective of her daughter, Mill is judgmental and leaves havoc in her wake. The town of Benedict takes most things in stride but Mill is a chaos creator. Mill is no ordinary mother: she’s on the run like Lucy. That’s her.” I blinked back some unexpected tears and told myself to keep it together. “You came to greet me! Hold on, I’m coming.” ![]() “Darlin’!” Mill smiled and waved in our direction, an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. Mill isn’t on the ferry’s manifest but Gril and Beth wait anyway. It was murder.”Ĭomplicating life further, the police chief tells Beth that there’s a rumor Mill is on the ferry from Juneau. I couldn’t see anything-no body, not even a spatter of blood.įor a long moment, no one said anything as Claudia wailed. I took a step closer to the scene, but Viola put her hand out to stop me. “What happened?” The words jumped out of my mouth. Reluctantly, Gril tells them they’ve found a body. The next morning Gril asks Beth, Claudia, and Viola, Benny’s sister, to accompany him outside. The weather isn’t much more hospitable to planes. He wants to transport her to Juneau but when winter sets in, the ferry from Juneau only runs once a week. The police chief puts Lucy in the halfway house, on house arrest. He hid her in a building on his property but Vitner discovered her presence. It was textbook victim denial, and I didn’t even know the circumstances.Ĭomplicating the situation, Ned’s sister Lucy, who has been secretly staying with him, is on the lam (she’s been accused of stealing jewelry). “All right, Claudia, tell me what happened. “Someone will take care of things,” she said. The townspeople know what to do, starting with Benny the bartender: they whisk her off to the local halfway house. Later that evening Claudia staggers into the town bar, battered and bloody. When Vitner asks how many people live in their house, Ned gets agitated and upset. Vitner visits Ned, a surly man who lives on the outskirts of town, and his wife Claudia. People give him a wide berth, preferring to keep their business to themselves. There’s a new man in town-Doug Vitner, the census guy. If a suspect is on the run, where do they hide, especially if they’re from the lower forty-eight? Most outsiders don’t have the wherewithal to prepare adequately for the extreme conditions. In Alaska, winter stretches roughly from October until March: the sun rises late in the morning and sets early at night, and the temperature drops way below freezing. I didn’t care what I looked like as long as it wasn’t brown-haired novelist Elizabeth Fairchild.ĭark Night opens as winter is closing in. My hair, now white from the trauma of being kidnapped, had grown out some from the hospital bathroom haircut I’d given myself, but the scar would probably always be obvious. I haven’t needed a tow yet, but maybe someday.” Take her conversation with Elijah Wyatt, the guy you call if you need a tow. Only the police chief Gril Samuels knows her back-story, or so Beth supposes. That was then.īeth’s carved out a good life for herself: she has a job, writing the weekly newspaper, the Petition, a room at the Benedict House, a halfway house for female felons, and friends and acquaintances (like her almost-boyfriend Tex). Beth has been searching for her father for years, with help from her mother Mill (Millicent) Rivers. A salient fact-Beth suspects Travis knew her as a child, and that he was close to her father and another man. She’s just escaped from the terror of having been kidnapped by a lunatic who claims she belongs to him.īeth suffered a serious head injury during her kidnapping by Travis Walker so her memories of her short imprisonment come through flashbacks. The series begins with Beth arriving in Alaska in a two-seat prop plane. Thin Ice was the first in Paige Shelton’s Alaska Wild mystery series. Folks in Benedict (a fictional town) respect one another’s privacy. What is the appeal of living in a practically off-the-grid Alaskan community? For Beth Rivers, who writes popular thrillers under the name Elizabeth Fairchild, the allure of Benedict is its remoteness. ![]()
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