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(Find The Serpents Trail in our catalog)

Just like a record number of HCPL readers this year, I have enrolled in our Winter Reading program. Having read a mystery set in Arkansas (Muletrain in Maggody), I decided to continue to read mysteries around the United States. This time I chose Alaska.


But wait! I had heard that Sue Henry, a very popular mystery author had a long-running series set in Alaska. What readers have particularly enjoyed in her novels is her evocation of the beautiful natural scenery of the state. I should have done my homework more carefully! The title I chose at random from Henry's works happened to be The Serpents Trail, the first in a breakaway series she started about two very popular characters in an earlier book, Maxie McNabb and her mini dachshund, Stretch. Maxie McNabb is an independent retiree and widow who sets off in her Mini Winnebego from her home in Alaska to explore the Lower 48. Her first stop is Grand Junction, Colorado, where she sadly has to spend a while to perform her duties as the executor of her best friend's will. So I ended up reading a mystery set in Colorado, with side trips to Utah!

I was not disappointed, however, in Sue Henry's description of the natural scenery. In almost lyrical language she paints vivid pictures of the startling landscape of colored rock, bluff, and river gorge, even getting down to the bright flash of color of an Indian Paintbrush flourishing half-hidden between two rocks.

Readers who like mysteries set in small towns, will like this book - the real town of Grand Junction is described in considerable detail. Maxie's friend, Sarah was the fourth generation of the family to live in the grand Victorian house on Chipeta Street, just a few tree-shaded blocks from the park. When Maxie arrives at the house expecting to help her ailing friend, she finds the back door open and the living room trashed. Sarah is in the hospital. When Maxie gets to Sarah's bedside she is just in time to hear that Sarah has been very worried about something that is "all wrong," and that she has called Maxie to help, before Sarah loses consciousness. When Sarah dies without revealing more, we learn that her death was not of natural causes. Maxie has to work through Sarah's cunningly hidden clues to the mystery from her past, while dealing with further intruders into the house, angry disinherited family members, and at least one attempt on her own life. The Serpents Trail is the name of a hiking trail in Colorado's Monument Park and also a metaphor for Maxie's quest to find her friend's killer.

I recommend this book to fans books about female friendship, and to fans of the gentle small-town mysteries of Margaret Maron. Maron's books feature Judge Deborah Knott, another middle-aged, strong, engaging female main character, just like Maxie McNabb.

Labels: Colorado fiction, female friendships - fiction, Murder mysteries, women detectives