The End of the Road-Sue Henry

The End of the Road
Sue Henry
Obsidian, Nov 2009, $23.95
ISBN: 9780451226044

She usually takes her RV and her mini dachshund Stretch to the lower Forty-eight during her get away from Alaska’s cold. However, this Maxie McNabb decides to stay home in Homer. All the snowbirds have fled south so when Maxie and Stretch walk on the beach she is surprised to meet someone else there. She invites John Walker to dinner with her and some of her friends and her son. Johne seems evasive about his life before he came to Homer.

The next day Maxie is sunned to learn John killed himself and he had no ID on him. When she goes to Anchorage Maxie sees a woman almost everywhere she goes, but the woman who seems to be following her makes no attempt at direct contact. Back home, Maxie sees her door ajar and smells perfume inside. A woman arrives soon afterward insisting she is John’s sister Amy, but vanishes before Maxie can get her to talk with the police. Anxious with fear, Maxie tries to stay ahead of the woman because she has a bad vibe about her..

Alaska comes alive in this colorful amateur sleuth mystery starring an intrepid female sexagenarian who has the energy to light up the Arctic during the extended night. Saddened by John’s death, Maxie moves on although events (and people) pull her right back into a deadly scenario. The support cast is solid, Stretch a darling and the heroine super, but Alaska is the superstar of Sue Henry’s terrific THE END OF THE ROAD.

Harriet Klausner