Book review: Marc Cameron delivers another Arliss Cutter novel

“Bad River”

By Marc Cameron; Kensington Books, 2024; 346 pages; $28.

Marc Cameron, a resident of Eagle River, is a former U.S. Marshal and the prolific author of best-selling thrillers including the Jack Ryan books (continuing in the Tom Clancy franchise), the Jericho Quinn series, and the Arliss Cutter series. He has authored 24 books since 2011. “Bad River,” his latest, is the sixth in the Cutter series, all of them set in Alaska.

Protagonist Arliss Cutter is a deputy U.S. Marshal who doesn’t always act within the rules. Raised by a grandfather who instilled in him and his brother a no-nonsense moral code and later traumatized by serving in the Afghanistan war, he allows family love and co-worker loyalty to drive his actions without regard for the subtleties of law and his personal safety.

As the story opens, Cutter and his partner are dodging bullets in the bushes near Twenty-Mile River. A chase ensues, and a fleeing minivan crashes into a gravel truck on the Seward Highway (spilling tons of gravel to block the road) before catapulting over the rocky bank onto the mudflats just as a bore tide bears down. The captured bad men, rescued with a “floating bridge” made up of floormats and other items donated by stopped motorists and the ballistic vests of the two marshals, spill the beans on a worse villain. Thus is set the tone and pace of this fast-moving, action-packed novel.

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The chronology moves backward then, to two years earlier, with a teenage girl in Wainwright walking home from a party, in a snowstorm, with polar bears all around. Then back to present-time, in Anchorage, where Cutter is trying to find and arrest a pornographer, human trafficker and drug dealer when not rescuing lost hikers. Cutter’s also determined to find the facts behind his brother’s earlier death on an exploding Arctic oil rig. There are also hints of romance, between Cutter and his widowed sister-in-law and between a North Slope police officer and just about every man in her circle.

The multiple storylines eventually come together to some degree, at least in the sense that Cutter’s in the middle of it all. For most of the book, he’s not even employed but “on leave,” acting on his own. He travels the state, from Anchorage to the North Slope and around the Arctic, and to South Dakota to track the source of fossils that meant something to his dead brother.

The many characters in many different situations here are sometimes a challenge to keep track of, but the principal ones are well-drawn and memorable. Cutter himself is war-scarred, with a soft side. Two other characters are particularly endearing. Cutter’s partner, Lola, is a small fireplug of tremendous courage and humor drawn from her Cook Islands origin. Bush Pilot Tony, the pilot everyone wants to avoid because of his youth and inexperience, becomes an unlikely hero.

As with “Chekhov’s rule” (if a gun appears in act one, by act three it has to be fired), a whaling harpoon that decorates an office in Utqiagvik eventually reappears.

Cameron clearly knows the ins and outs of both Alaska and the business of what he calls “man-hunting.” His depictions of firearms, police procedures, drugs, small planes, Anchorage locations, clothing and shoe brands, and village life — even his use of Inupiaq words — lend considerable verisimilitude to his invented plot.

On the mountain rescue mission, a voice is “a whining chainsaw that cut through the trees and fog”; the same scene includes devil’s club, alder thickets and an upturned poplar where a man cowers against “the tangle of mud and stone” next to a “tree-choked canyon.” Readers with an interest in guns and/or police work will find exact descriptions: “Both weapons were loaded with a combination of Brenneke Black Magic lead slugs and double-ought buckshot, carried patrol ready — chamber empty, four in the tube, safety off, trigger pulled.” One detail likely meant to amuse Alaska readers has Cutter stopping by Mosquito Books in the Anchorage airport for “a copy of a Don Reardon book the chief had been recommending.”

In the more exotic Arctic scenes, a traditional ice cellar and its frozen contents provide significant details. In Utqiagvik a sign on the hotel door warns to watch out for polar bears. “An angry Arctic Ocean chewed away the land beyond a row of weathered buildings across a ... cratered street, ignoring the car-size sandbags and metal bollards ...” Cutter takes oranges on a trip north, knowing they’ll be a treat; there, he eats a dinner of tuttu (caribou) in a dish called aluuttagaaq. “From the air, Wainwright Inlet looked disturbingly like a ginormous alien with long, spindly legs and outstretched arms.”

In his acknowledgements section, Cameron thanks the friends and colleagues who helped him with details of man-tracking, martial arts, airplane capabilities and technologies that have been adopted since his own days in the field. One friend introduced him to several Arctic communities and accompanied him on a research trip to Utqiagvik. As part of his travels, Cameron met with educators and students to talk about writing and encourage storytelling. The knowledge and sensitivity he gained expand “Bad River” from what might have been an all-plot thriller with plenty of shoot-’em-up violence to one more genuinely situated among the people and places of Alaska. Readers who enjoy “Bad River” have five others in the series (with another on the way) in which to follow Cutter and his partner Lola into more Alaska trouble and heroics.

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