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Book Reviews Title Beneath
The Ashes Fiction-Net
Rating Buy It
From Amazon.co.uk - Buy
Now! Cover
Story In a breathtaking
land of ice and cold, death has come... by
fire. In the lingering
chill of the early Alaskan spring, famed "musher"
Jessie Arnold confronts the charred remains of a
favourite local pub, destroyed by a suspicious
blaze that claimed an innocent, unsuspecting life.
This lull between racing seasons is meant to be a
time of grueling training and conditioning for
Jessie and her dogsled team - but instead it has
become a time of fear. Because the burning has only
begun, and its flames will scar and blister
Jessie's world in ways she can barely imagine. And
in the wake of more death, her next race will be
one for survival - as she struggles to determine
whether a desperate friend is a terrified victim
... or a killer. We
Say Many writers are
told to write what they know about. Unfortunately,
some writers do not follow that advice. In their
attempt to create an interesting setting for their
stories, writers will sometimes glamorize or
romanticize an area. By substituting insufficient
research for actual experience, many writers end up
discrediting their own work. It is for these
reasons that I decided to read Sue Henry's novel,
Beneath The Ashes. Since my husband is a musher, I
thought that this novel would be good for a few
laughs. Well, I was disappointed. Henry knows her
stuff and she manages to avoid most clichés
about living in Alaska. In Beneath The Ashes, Henry
combines a murder mystery with the reality of a
musher living in the far North. Anyone who knows
anything about Alaska knows that it is a male
dominated environment. That is not to say that
women do not do well in Alaska, but it does take a
special type. Henry creates such a woman in her
very memorable heroine, Jessie Arnold. Self
sufficient and confident, Jessie is not easily
frightened by the increasingly dangerous
circumstances that she finds herself in when an old
acquaintance calls her in the middle of the night.
A series of arsons results in Jessie doubting the
friendships of those around her and eventually
fighting for her life. Unable to determine how the
arsonist fits in with those Jessie already knows,
Jessie must rely on herself in order to
live. As murder
mysteries go, Beneath The Ashes is not a tale that
is woven as tightly as I would have liked. There
were some loose ends at the end of the novel that
Henry failed to tidy up sufficiently. Even with
these minor shortcomings, her characters are
believable and her descriptions of dog mushing
realistic and educational. Overall Henry manages to
write a mystery that captures the imagination.
Although this would not be a novel that I would
consider outstanding, what Henry manages to get
right makes this a novel worth taking a look
at. Review by: Yumi
Nagasaki-Taylor |
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