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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780380816842
ISBN number: 0380816849
Label: Avon
Manufacturer: Avon
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: 2002-04
Publishing house: Avon
Release Date: April 30, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 78248
Studio: Avon
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Product Description:
With her cabin a pile of ashes and her lite in pieces, champion Alaskan 'musher' Jessie Arnold has gratefully accepted a friend's proposal that she drive his motor home up from Idaho, along the Alaska Highway -- a breathtaking, two thousand-mile-long route winding past hot springs, glaciers, and ice-blue lakes. But the idyllic trip takes a dark turn when a teenage hitchhiker brings terror aboard. Frightened and alone, Patrick Cutler disappears just before the police inform Jessie that the young runaway is wanted in connection with two shocking murders. Suddenly she is cast into a raging maelstrom of dark secrets and deadly consequences. And the cold and empty road she's traveling could be leading her not to her home...but to a grave in the trackless wilderness.
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Rated by buyers 
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The cassette version of this book is quite enjoyable, especially if you've been reading the author's Jesse Arnold series already, starting with Murder on the Iditarod Trail. In this one, Jesse agrees to drive a big Winnebago motor home up the Alaska highway to deliver it to an Alaskan friend. On the way, she meets Maxie McNab, a free-spirited 61-year-old widow who roams the country in her motor home. Maxie returns later in her own series, which I have read. It was fun to read her very first book appearance. They get involved with a teenaged fugitive and many dangerous and interesting things transpire.
The story moves a tad slowly at times, but comes to fairly satisfactory conclusion. The descriptions of the places along the fabled Alaskan Highway are delightful to read--you'll be ready to tackle the highway yourself when you're done with this book.
I recommend it to Jessie Arnold and Maxie McNab fans as well as anyone who is interested in the Alaskan Highway. Many of the Jessie Arnold stories involve sled dog racing, but this one does not. Jessie's lead dog, Tank, accompanies her on the adventures, but that's it for sled dog racing in this story.
Rated by buyers 
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I discovered Sue Henry on a recent trip to Alaska. I have enjoyed the few that I have read. I thoroughly enjoyed Dead North. Worth a read if you like mysteries.
Rated by buyers -
Henry isn't the very first to use our northerly cousin for her books. But I am pretty sure she is the best. Her books tend to involve her dogs a lot more, but in this one she is driving an RV to Alaska as a favor to a friend. She manages to pick up an unwanted guest at one of the many places she stops on the way north, and though she wasn't the one who originally agrees to transport a 17 year old kid part way to Alaska (good girl!) she does manage to become involve. Unfortunately, the baggage that others may carry may become our baggage if we start carrying it. Remember that when agree to transport luggage for family or friends who may be less than honest about what they tucked away iin the corner of the suitcase.
Jessie becomes suspiscious of the kid almost immediately, just because he isn't looking anyone in the eye (par for course with that age group). When she figures out someone is trying to kill him and her for transporting him, she is so busy trying to avoid that end that she hardly has time to get the whole story out of him. Luckily, Jessie also manages to pick up another girlfriend with an RV going north, a couple of cops looking for the kid, and a concerned trucker with a rig. These guys are all that saves Jessie and kid from becoming the subsequent Jimmy Hoffa.
Henry paints with words. That's been said before, and will be used again, but Henry is really good at it. She really can paint the outdoors and the beauties of Alaska with words. This is part of what makes her books so good and so enjoyable. Alaska sounds so beautiful, it's hard not to understand the need for everyone not to want to go up there. Especially young men running away from family problems.
The only reason Henry got 4 stars is because of unfinished business. When writing a heavily-characterized mystery, authors need to keep track of all these characters and tell the readers where they all went...if we cannot figure it out for ourselves.
Karen Sadler
Rated by buyers 
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A murder takes place in Wyoming. A boy is on the run. Jessie Arnold has agreed to drive a motor home from Idaho to Alaska for the contractor who is building her new cabin. These two worlds collide on the highway and Jessie finds herself smack dab in the middle of trouble. There is less story involving her dogs in this one, although she does have her lead dog, Tank, with her. This story is more about the characters she meets on the road and they are an interesting bunch. There is a lot of scenic description, which Henry always does very well. This is a good story for readers interested in travel. Some of the chase scenes were riveting, but the mystery, itself, fell a little short.
Rated by buyers -
I sometimes think that Sue Henry should have been a travel writer. The best of her books mix murder with intricately described journeys in which learning the details of the trip itself are half of the reason for reading the book. If you're not interested in the trip, you're probably not going to be interested in the book. That is probably the reason for the hot-and-cold reviews this one has been receiving--especially because this book's topic, an RV journey up the Alaskan Highway, is considerably less exotic than the dogsledding stories that built the author's reputation.
Because they mix travel with mystery, Sue Henry's books tend to be relatively gentle stories in which pleasant but not deeply drawn characters provide amiable companionship for the armchair traveler. (If you want heart-pounding thrillers, read Dean Koontz.) Nor are they complex Agatha Christie - style puzzles. Oh yes, there's always a villain, sometimes a pretty cruel one, but Henry seems to be one of those people who genuinely likes most of her fellow humans, and she does not delight in giving readers a whole roomful of unsympathetic characters from which to endeavor to identify the villain.
So is this book any good? That depends mostly on how interested you are in learning about the Alaskan Highway and RVing, because the reviewers below are correct in pointing out that the book is chuck-full of details that have no relevance to the plot. Nor are you going to find deep insights into human nature. Even the villain is a bit of a stock psychopath, although he does have other motivations.
The biggest flaw involves the plot machinations Henry needs to use in order for her characters to repeatedly cross paths as they move up the highway by disparate modes of transportation (RV, hitchhiking, pickup truck, bicycle, 18-wheeler) that should have them traveling at quite different paces. Also, none can be allowed to realize that anytime they want, they can separate themselves from this dangerous, traveling circus simply by holing up for a couple of nights as everyone else moves north.
Still, this is a fun read, and I'm already partway through the subsequent book in the series. Fasten you seatbelts and enjoy the Alaskan Highway!
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