Alaska Dispatch

According to an interview at Publisher's Weekly, author Stan Jones became fascinated by Eskimo culture when he lived in a remote Arctic village, and he knew he wanted to write crime fiction. But, when he read a book by Tony Hillerman, whose main-character sleuth is Navajo, he started figuring out how. Jones created Nathan Active, an Inupiaq detective born in the Bush but raised by Anglos in Anchorage. According to Jones, this unusual, severed and dual existence serves the character well because he is able to be flexible as he straddles two cultures to solve mysteries. Jones's fourth Nathan Active novel, Village of the Ghost Bears is out, and according to Publisher's Weekly, it "probes the mystery of life in northwest Alaska." Already kicking around ideas for his next project, Jones is thinking about writing a "big, big novel about an Alaskan bush pilot." Read more here.