His last wish: deliver the urn to Rocky Mountain National Park and release his ashes into Lake Nanita. To find closure, she’ll hike the same route they completed after her latest involuntary stay at the hospital.
But not alone, as she’d hoped. Her cousin Dalton surprises her at the trailhead and insists on tagging along. Soon, his eerie stares and half-volume mutterings set her on edge. As they trudge further into the mountains, dodging moose and lightning strikes, she catches him rifling through her backpack multiple times. She confronts him but he shrugs it off. His claims that he came along for support wear thin, but she’s too deep into the park simply to turn around.
When Reagan discovers a hidden compartment in the lid of the urn, a tiny silver key tumbles onto the floor of her tent. But there’s no telling what lock the key might open. More unsettling, however, is that her lithium has gone missing. With only a meager Swiss Army knife for protection, she’ll have to fend off her cousin, resist the creeping mania, and escape the forest to find the lock. If the man Dalton works for locates it first, he’ll reduce Reagan to the same pile of dust and ash.
Filled with intimate and visceral details about hiking and backpacking in national parks, Reagan’s ashes mixes the genres of amateur sleuth mystery, psychological suspense, thrilling wilderness survival, and action adventure, with a touch of romance. Plenty of twists and turns will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens.
Book review: This smart, edgy thriller begins in the middle. When we walk into the forest with Reagan and her creepy cousin we’re already in the midst of the action. There are several preceding strands to the mystery that are carefully revealed to us as our heroine treks toward we-don’t-know-what. These factors culminate and propel us forward into the depth of a thriller with a surprising climax that has a few twists… The story is crisp and fast moving with the various viewpoints and time-frames quite seamlessly melded together. The trek is an interesting visit to the Rocky Mountains – the descriptions transporting. There’s a tinge of humour with a play on accents that is well done. There’s an interesting delve into the mind of our emotionally unstable heroine… This book has a lot going for it.
G.S. Bailey 