Tales of the Alaska State Troopers

 Tales of the Alaska State Troopers: Stories of Courage, Survival, and Honor from the Last Frontier ... by Peter B. Mathiesen

With the elements against them, the state troopers of Alaska face every day with a fight for their lives.

In the state of Alaska, anything goes. For the state troopers, an average day can include blizzard conditions, midnight sunsets, and subzero temperatures. Tales of the Alaska State Troopers gives insight to just how the brave men of the law combat these conditions while still upholding their duties to the fine people of Alaska.

Follow Trooper Dan Valentine as he finds himself in the midst of a crisis when an abandoned truck holds more than just an old blanket on the passenger seat. Dan’s responsibility for the town of Trapper Creek becomes a fight for survival when he realizes the truck has enough explosives in it to make a small dent in the Alaska Range.

Troopers such as John Adams and Terrance Shanigan also have more to worry about than frostbite. Their stories include rescuing an Eskimo who has fall through the ice on his snow mobile, locating missing teenagers after a terrifying bear attack, and occasionally scraping dead, frozen, thousand-pound moose off major highway roads.

Tales of the Alaska State Troopers is rich in content and action. Anyone familiar with the life of a lawman or the state of Alaska will be fascinated with the way Mathiesen delivers his narrative. It’s all in a day’s work for troopers like Dan Valentine, who never know what a new day can bring.

 Until space travel was invented, Alaska was known as the last frontier. Yet, this author proves just how much those in the 'lower 48' don't really know what it's like to live in such a State like this one. In so many ways, Alaska still IS the last frontier and will most likely always stay that way.

Most of us, not all of course, probably could never conceive of living where we couldn't get access to our public safety officials within a matter of minutes. Alaskans who don't live in one of the very few larger towns or cities, live with this constantly. Imagine having an emergency that needs a police officer or paramedic pronto and learning that you won't get one for hours.

That is what this book is all about. It is a sometimes extremely dry narrative (nearly report like) but an always informative look into the jobs and lives of some of these men (nope, no women troopers in this book). There is a great deal of information, both historical and geographical in this book and I enjoyed that aspect a lot.

Even some of the stories that had meant to be humerus took on a the authors dry aspect. The exception was one notable story concerning a dead moose and a trooper trying to get this carcass off of the road. He was doing this in 40 below weather with the moose actually frozen onto the black-top! This story had me in stitches.

I wish that some of the stories had been from the last few years so we could have seen exactly how far Alaskan troopers had come, but I am hoping to see a sequel.

*ARC supplied by publisher for reviewing purposes.