Wild Trek

Our rating: ****

Nobody has ever gone into the Caribou mountains and lived to tell the tale. Recently, Trigg Antray, a naturalist looking for albino moose, and his pilot crashed and radioed for help. Constable John Murdock has a broken arm and can’t go after them. And so Link Stevens and his dog Chiri are on the job. He finds the two lost men without much trouble, but Antray is injured, and when they try rafting back to civilization, the pilot takes all their gear and leaves them behind. With only some fishing line and a jackknife, Link and Trigg must survive where no man has succeeded.

This is the sequel to Snow Dog, although it could stand on its own. Wild Trek is somewhat better than its predecessor. There are a number of exciting points, and it’s amazing what Link and Trigg do to survive.

Snow Dog

Our rating: ****

Link Stevens is a trapper in the Gander mountains. He comes to his small cabin every year with his five dogs. This year, his new dog Queen runs away to have her puppies. However, she and all but one puppy are killed by a ferocious black wolf. The one surviving puppy stays in the wilderness and grows up wild. Meanwhile, Link wonders what happened to his dog. Not until a year later does he find the puppy and name him Chiri. But Link wonders if Chiri will stay with him, or go back to the wild.

Hmm, what do you think? Snow Dog is quite predictable, but the story is exciting. Kjelgaard makes up for being predictable with a breathless, can’t-put-the-book-down-for-the-suspense type of ending. The sequel, Wild Trek, is better, but you’ll understand it more if you read Snow Dog first.

A Nose for Trouble

Our rating: *****

Tom Rainse has just returned to Tanner’s Mountain, and things are much different from when he left. New game laws limit how much hunting you can do, and poachers are everywhere. Threatened by a poacher named The Black Elk, Tom becomes a game warden. Along with Smoky, the bloodhound his friend Bill Tolliver gave him, Tom must track down The Black Elk and stop the poaching once and for all.

Here’s a thriller with something for everybody. The mystery has several twists and turns, the ending is unexpected, and the characters are great. For those of you who won’t read A Nose for Trouble unless I say so, this book is far from being about the dog! It’s very much about the people in the mountains, and their choices to obey or disobey the new hunting laws. Sadly, this book is out of print, but your local library may have it.