DEAD NORTH by Sue Henry

DEAD NORTH by Sue Henry
An Alaska Mystery
William Morrow - July, 2001
ISBN: 0380978814 - Hardcover
Amateur Sleuth

Reviewed by Susan McBride, MyShelf.com
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Though DEAD NORTH is subtitled "An Alaska Mystery," this one isn't really set in Alaska but rather follows musher Jessie Arnold as she does a favor for the contractor building her new house, agreeing to drive his recently purchased Winnebago the 2,000 miles from Idaho back home. Jessie takes along her lead dog, Tank, as she figures he'll be the perfect companion for the trip. She expects lots of time to revel in the quiet of the road and stop to take photographs of the scenery along the way. What she doesn't expect is that she'll get entangled in a teenaged runaway's life or death struggle to stay a beat ahead of his violent stepfather.

Jessie does meet a fellow solo traveler along the route, a twice-widowed woman named Maxine "Maxie" Stillman Flanagan McNabb, and the two strike up a nice friendship. While the murder mystery itself didn't exactly glue my eyes to the pages, Sue Henry's vivid descriptions of the beauty along the Alaskan Highway certainly had me dreaming of a long vacation.