"Crime fiction is when you put Aunt Ada at risk," Stabenow said. "A thriller is when you put Aunt Ada's entire nation at risk."

"At risk" doesn't mean a theater or bank or a big tall building. As anyone who has read her fiction knows, Stabenow doesn't hold back. In "Blindfold Game," her first thriller, a terrorist threatens to launch a SCUD missile packed with radioactive material a dirty bomb at Southcentral Alaska. In "Prepared for Rage," a terrorist plans to well, without giving away the plot, the novel involves the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Douglas A. Munro and a space shuttle launch. Stabenow, the reader should be warned, likes to make things go boom.

Other thrillers might glorify Navy Seals, Delta Force commandos or supersecret black-ops agents, but in "Blindfold Game" and "Prepared for Rage," the heroes are men and women known well to Alaskans in fishing communities: the Coast Guard.

"I grew up in sea coastal Alaska. The Coast Guard is a pretty big presence," Stabenow said.

Raised in Seldovia for much of her life, she lived on a fishing tender, the Celtic Stabenow returned several years ago to Kachemak Bay. She earned overnight success the good old-fashioned way, with years of hard work nose to the keyboard.

This week, she just finished the rough draft of her 16th Kate Shugak series novel, the mysteries about a tough, sexy sleuth in Bush Alaska. "Prepared for Rage" is her 24th novel but who's counting? including four Liam Campbell books about an Alaska State Trooper and three science fiction novels. She also edited five anthologies and has published about a dozen short stories.

"Blindfold Game" has won acclaim from Coasties for its accurate portrayals of life on board Coast Guard cutters. That's no accident. Stabenow is a dogged researcher. She once worked in a library, loves libraries and books, and has even given real-life reference librarians cameo roles in her novels.

So when she began researching "Blindfold Game," she stumbled across the Web site for the U.S.C.G.C. Alex Haley and found the e-mail address for Capt. Craig Barkley "Bark" Lloyd. Could she maybe go down to Kodiak and visit the cutter?

"He could ignore me, he could say no, he could say yes," Stabenow said.

"'You want to go on patrol?'" she said Lloyd e-mailedher back. "I thought, yeah."

Out of that 16-day patrol came a lot of the drama and action that propels "Blindfold Game," right down to the nuts, bolts, gears and guns of a working Coast Guard cutter. Stabenow also posted a blog on her Web page, www.stabenow.com. It's first-person, embedded-reporter journalism Coast Guard families loved, Lloyd said.

"The families really appreciated having her on board," Lloyd said. "She was able to give a really unique angle to the people who wondered what it was like."

After Lloyd took command of Munro, a 378-foot cutter formerly based in Alameda, Calif., and now in Kodiak, he invited Stabenow back for a patrol in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

"Evidently I didn't behave too badly on the Alex Haley, because I got an invitation to sail again," Stabenow said.

"She was a good shipmate," Lloyd said. "She takes lots of notes and asks lots of questions, but she's not overbearing."

Out of that tour came "Prepared for Rage." While "Blindfold Game" is set in Alaska, the second thriller heads south. There's an Alaska angle with main character Kenai Munro, an Alaska astronaut. She's distantly related to Douglas Munro, the Coast Guard Medal of Honor recipient for whom U.S.C.G.C. Munro is named. When Kenai Munro gets picked for a shuttle mission, the cutter Munro is assigned offshore security near Cape Canaveral.

When Stabenow researched "Blindfold Game," she found out the Coast Guard did security for shuttle launches keeping fishermen, tourists and bad guys from getting too close to the launch area.

"I thought, Oh, really?" Stabenow said. "They always say, you hurt the ones you love. I love the space program."

Threatening to hurt that shuttle launch is a classic international terrorist, Akil. He's a complex character, though, even sympathetic, and comes out of a mystery: Why do some people commit unspeakable evil, and what drives them?

"Where does that come from?" Stabenow said. "I wanted to try and figure that out."

Don't expect Jack Bauer, "24" style beat-the-terrorist senseless action from Stabenow. She has a Guantanamo Bay interrogation scene, but the interrogators get their answers through psychological manipulation. Fighting terrorism through less-violent means although there's plenty of blood in "Prepared for Rage" is a theme Stabenow said she wanted to explore in her thriller. Maybe America should try a little less gunboat diplomacy and a little more foreign aid. Instead of spending $1.6 trillion on the Iraq War, what if America had built schools, hospitals and roads? Stabenow asked.

"It would have taken a lot longer than what we're doing right now, but in the end, nobody would hate us," she said. "There's a better way to do things: that's one of the things that came out of 'Prepared for Rage' for me."

Stabenow said she has some more novels in mind beyond the next Kate Shugak maybe another Liam Campbell or a third thriller. She considers herself a storyteller in the classic sense. "I'm the gal sitting around the fire with a bowl in her hand, telling stories and hoping to get a few coins in that bowl before everyone turns in for the night," she writes on her Web page. "I want to make you laugh. I want to make you cry. I want to scare the bejesus out of you, and if it makes you think a little bit, too, that's just gravy."

Lloyd thinks it's gravy if Stabenow's novels let the world know more about the Coast Guard.

"It's great the more people can understand what it is we do," he said. "They'll understand the value we bring to the nation."

For Stabenow's blog on her Munro tour including the origin of plot elements like the Darwin Sorter and the dust bunny visit her Web site at www.stabenow.com.

Stabenow leaves for a book tour this week, signing at the Poison Pen bookstore in Phoenix, Ariz.; Title Wave Books in Anchorage and at the Kodiak Public Library in Kodiak.

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong@homernews.com.