MURDER AT FIVE FINGER LIGHT
by Sue Henry
Musher Jessie Arnold (The Serpent’s Trail, 2004, etc.) finds herself in an Alaskan version of And Then There Were None, except that, luckily for her, it’s And Then There Were Some Left Over.
On remote Five Finger Island in the Frederick Sound, Laurie Trevino and Jim Beal are restoring a historic lighthouse. Laurie calls to ask her friend Jessie’s boyfriend, State Trooper Alex Jensen, for advice about some unnamed problem on the island, but misses him. Since the island measures three acres altogether, with some special bugs as the only permanent residents, how big could the problem be? Deciding to join them for a weekend restoration work party, Jessie heads to Peterson, in South Alaska. While she’s waiting for Jim and his boat to pick her up, Jessie runs into (or is it vice versa?) Karen Emerson, a frightened young woman on the run from a stalker who tracked her to Peterson. Jessie invites her to join the work party, where she’s confident Karen will be protected by the isolation. Their first morning on the island, Karen discovers the bludgeoned body of a young fisherman wearing the stalker’s coat. Phones and radios disabled and the boat sunk, Jessie and her friends are trapped on the island with a killer.
Anticlimactic and tediously expository, Henry keeps getting in the way of a perennial throat-catcher and a great setting.