Henry, Sue: Cold Company (Jessie Arnold Mystery)

Book cover excerpt: Multiple award-winning author Sue Henry once again carries us into the heart of America's last frontier with a gripping tale of suspense set in a land whose rugged, exquisite beauty appeals to the adventurous and strong...and to those who are drawn to darkness.

The summer solstice is near---bringing long sunlit days to the Alaskan wilderness---and for famed "musher" Jessie Arnold, the time has come to put the past behind her and move on. Building a new home for herself and her sled dogs on the charred ashes of her old one, she plans to be finished well before the onset of the long northern winter. But her progress is halted---chilling Jessie to the bone---when the excavations unearth a skeleton entoumbed in a crumbling basement wall.

Twenty years earlier, a serial killer brutally murdered a number of women in the area. One of the fiend's victims disappeared wearing butterfly pendant---a necklace similar, if not identical, to one discovered with the grisly human remains. A grim nightmare believed to be long over must bow be revisited or, worse still, has been reborn. Because, once again, a local woman has disappeared without a trace.

And, once again, Jessie is being pulled into a murder investigation against her will. Red roses are being sent to her anonymously---the gifts of a secret admirer who may also be a stone-cold killer. In this stark and lonely place, in the first days of the all-too-brief Alaskan summer, the signs suggest the unthinkable: An insatiable human monster has returned...and Jessie Arnold may well be his next victim.

In what is perhaps her most unforgettable novel to date, the incomparable Sue Henry weaves a spellbinding tale of past sins and present-day evils, of humanity at its best and at its worst, and nature at its most powerful.

Note to self and to others, might be a good idea to read a series in order, rather than as you find them, LOL. My what confusion ensues when you've read later ones and try to put the current one you're reading in perspective as to timeline.

I read some of the Jessie Arnold books before, and really enjoyed them...but I think they all came later than this one, and my mind boggles trying to keep that in mind.

The author also makes note at the end of the book that there really was a Robert Hansen that was an evil monster in Alaska a few decades past. He was a big game hunter who then chose to change his game to the female human type...along with rape. There are two books on him, but will let you look it up...don't know if I want to remember that, LOL.

I see Alaska as a near pristine wilderness, where most "unnatural" deaths would be caused by wildlife or unfortunate accidents. Tend to forget the human factor, and that the mentally messed up might see it as an ideal location to practice their deviant behavior.

Still like Jessie with Alex Jensen though...