July 22, 2006 in Features

RVs star in new detective novels

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Another mature RV heroine has leaped onto the fiction pages of the cozy crime genre.

Ivy Malone, an unlikely, slightly quirky amateur sleuth, is on Social Security and on the lam.

First introduced in “Invisible” (Revell, 2004), Malone picked up a small class C motor home at the end of the second novel, “In Plain Sight” (2005). Now she is “On the Run” (2006) in the third book of this improbable mystery series by Lorena McCourtney.

McCourtney, born on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit and a graduate of Washington State University, is an award-winning author of several dozen novels.

“Ivy is on the run from these bad guys who are after her from the first book,” says McCourtney from her home outside of Grants Pass, Ore.

“I wanted to keep her on the move,” she says, “but I also wanted her to have a home, not be wandering with a suitcase from motel to apartment, and I think a motor home can be a real home.”

McCourtney should know. She and her husband, Jim, have been RVers for more than three decades.

They currently own a 30-foot class A motor home for trips to the Oregon Coast and a 24-foot travel trailer (towed by a 4x4 pickup) for rougher backcountry exploring.

“We pulled one travel trailer down to Baja, Calif.,” she says, “and left it there, going back for a month or so each winter for about nine years.”

RVing, says McCourtney, can’t be beat for seeing the country, or for going somewhere and staying a while.

“Stranded,” the fourth in this whodunit series, is due out this fall. In it Ivy and her traveling companion, Abilene, a young hitchhiker she pick up in Oklahoma, make their way to Colorado.

There, in a small Rocky Mountain town, they become “stranded” when their motor home develops engine trouble.

Before long, however, excitement erupts with a Roaring ‘20s chorus line, an entertaining cast of characters and, most importantly, a dead body.

Maxie McNabb returns

Also back is on the road is Maxie McNabb, the gutsy 60-something RVer in Sue Henry’s newest amateur detective series.

Maxie, a twice-widowed retiree, was introduced by Henry in “Dead North” (2001), her seventh “Jessie Arnold Alaska Mystery.”

Because of Maxie’s popularity in “Dead North,” she returned in 2004 as the central character in “The Serpents Trail.”

Maxie is a combination of a no-nonsense Tyne Daly and a sensual Colleen Dewhurst.

When Henry was drafting Maxie’s character she thought of Dewhurst in the early ‘90s film, “Dying Young.”

“In that film,” said Henry in a previous telephone interview from her home in Alaska, “Dewhurst played a vineyard owner who had buried three husbands. She was a strong, earth-mother-type who was going on with her life. That’s how I see Maxie.”

In her latest adventure, “Tooth of Time” (2006), Maxie explores the Four-Corner’s region of the Southwest in her class C Winnebago motor home.

She and her dachshund sidekick, Stretch, stumble onto a mysterious disappearance while stopping off for a few days in Taos, N.M.

While “The Serpents Trail” was more satisfying as a mystery, “The Tooth of Time” features Henry’s trademark attention to detail with vivid, almost travelogue detail.

“I’ve read too many books that are poorly researched,” said Henry. “It bothers me when authors get something totally wrong or they don’t have enough in it.”

Henry went on to say that library research and looking at photographs aren’t enough.

“I need to know what a place feels like and smells like,” she said.

“I try to put into a book the things I like to find in a book myself. That takes a lot of research,” she said. “But, the upside is that I get to go and do the research.”

For more information

“ Lorena McCourtney’s Web site is www.lorenamccourtney.com. Her books are published by Revell Books at www.revellbooks.com.

“ Books by both McCourtney and Sue Henry are available through the public library, online book dealers and local bookstores including Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main Ave., (888) 802-6657, www.auntiesbooks.com.

“ View the latest Winnebagos motor homes online at www.winnebagoind.com.

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