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The first two of the acknowledgments for this book sum it up: Thanks to a Hilo Motor Home rental company and an Anchorage RV sales company for information on truck campers like those available for rent in Hawaii. Then, there is a particular thank you to one particular Big Island Dinner Cruise company, which is detailed very explicitly in the text . . . After reading the book, this thank you seems very much like a thank you for dinner and here's your payment. Much of this 258-page book reads like a Madison Avenue product placement. The RV brand names drop like lead barrels over Niagara Falls. Yup, they're there. We got it. Gonna go buy us some of them now. Maxie McNabb is summoned to the big island of Hawaii by an old friend to help move the friend back to Alaska. Although Maxie makes it very clear that Karen, the Alaskan ex-pat now in Hawaii, never was that good a friend and, after Maxie's having been away from her own home in Alaska for nine months and her dog Stretch can't join her because of Hawaii's anti-rabies quarantine laws . . . well, Maxie goes to Hawaii to help Karen (who, somehow or other, has a broken left arm and leg). Henry's descriptions of Karen make it fairly clear that Maxie never truly considered Karen a real friend, so the first question in the story is why, after Maxie has just spent nine months outside of Alaska, she is so willing to go to Hawaii a week after arriving back to her house in Homer, Alaska, which is obviously the only place she and Stretch want to be. The only answer seems to be that Sue Henry needed to write a book about Hawaii and RVing there. Henry has written many wonderful mysteries set in Alaska, featuring sometime Iditarod Musher Jessie Arnold. Jessie makes a couple of appearances in THE REFUGE – mostly, it seems, to remind Henry's readers that she can do better than this. This is Maxie's third featured outing, after first appearing in a cameo in one of the Jessie Arnold books. THE REFUGE has some interesting information about Hawaii. If you want to read a fun travelogue, this could be it. If you are looking for a good Sue Henry mystery, seek elsewhere. Personally, I feel cheated. I've been to Hawaii and I found nothing particularly informative about Henry's descriptions. THE REFUGE is neither a good mystery nor a particularly good travel guide. Sue Henry can, and usually does, do much better, with both mystery and sense of place.
Reviewed by Susan Frank Zucker, April 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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