Lost Angel by Mike Doogan

From the Publisher

Faith Wright, granddaughter of the founder of Rejoice, a Christian community in the icy interior of Alaska, has disappeared. Now the elders of Rejoice must look beyond their close-knit village for help.

Once a decorated detective, now an ex-con, Nik Kane is desperate for a second chance. Nothing can give him back his career or family, but the search for Faith may restore his soul.

Publishers Weekly

Meet Nik Kane, the charming star of a new series by Anchorage Daily News columnist Doogan. Kane, a 55-year-old ex-cop who's also an ex-con, not to mention an ex-husband, heads to the Alaskan interior to do some detective work for a remote religious community called Rejoice. One of Rejoice's leaders, Thomas Wright, has hired Kane to track down his teenage daughter, Faith. Maybe Faith ran away, or maybe she was abducted. Kane-only periodically distracted from his detecting by his attraction to a woman he meets at Rejoice-quickly learns that Faith wasn't representative of her conservative religious community. A budding feminist with Ivy League ambitions, she also had a sideline income, $500 a week, deposited in a pseudonymous bank account. While Doogan telegraphs the solution to the riddle of Faith's disappearance, engaging, lucid prose more than compensates. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The reclusive Christian community of Rejoice, AK, must ask for outside help when its founder's granddaughter disappears. They turn to Nik Kane, a former top Anchorage Police Department detective who served seven years in prison for shooting an unarmed suspect. Kane finds that appearances are misleading as he tries to make sense of the town's communal way of life and questions residents for leads to the missing teen. Alaska emerges as a tough, gritty place where danger lurks even in the most unassuming situations. Here's hoping that first time novelist and Anchorage Daily News columnist Doogan will write many more mysteries with Nik Kane, one of the truly engaging new detectives on the scene. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A model teenager disappears from a controversial religious community. Former Anchorage, Alaska, police detective Nik Kane flies to the remote middle of the state in a single-engine plane to meet with the Council of Elders of Rejoice, an austere Christian community of 300 souls founded 30 years earlier by imperious Moses Wright, who still leads them. Wright's granddaughter, Faith, an honor student and ostensibly contented member of the sect, has disappeared without a trace, and Kane's former colleagues in Anchorage have neither the resources nor, it seems, the desire to investigate thoroughly. For Kane, the case is a lifeline. Recently released from prison after serving seven years for a shooting he might not be guilty of, he can't return to the Anchorage PD, and his ex-wife Laurie won't reconcile with him. Incremental snippets of flashback fill in the details of that shooting as Kane, in the present, ruffles feathers in Rejoice asking questions about Faith. Gathering information in the guarded community is slow work. Neither Moses nor Faith's father, Thomas, will talk about his mother, Margaret Wright, who abruptly left her family and never contacted them again. Kane's challenge, and Doogan's most interesting notion, is the reconstruction of the absent Faith from the disparate descriptions of friends, family and teachers. Much of the mystery is boilerplate, but this series kickoff provides a righteously appealing hero and terrific local color.

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