As the first snowfall coats Homer, Alaska, we find Maxie McNabb and her pooch Stretch hunkering down for what looks like a long winter. Usually Maxie heads south in her motor home to avoid the cold, dark months—but not this year.

Taking a walk on the town's deserted beach before the storm arrives, Maxie befriends a stranger and invites him to dinner with some of her friends. Although he's very quiet, everyone likes John Walker but, unfortunately, no one is able to get to know him better. The morning after the gathering, Walker is found dead in his hotel room, an apparent suicide.

Curious about her dinner guest's background and who he really was (since he apparently used an alias), Maxie does a little snooping. She also notices that she's become the subject of "interest" from a mysterious individual who shadows her. When someone breaks into Maxie's home while she's away, the situation becomes a little more sinister. The story hits critical mass when a corpse is found wrapped in a rug in the woman's attic.

Now this may sound like an intriguing whodunit but, unfortunately, it isn't. On a ten point suspense scale, this novel merits only about a three! Although Maxie is a likeable amateur sleuth and the author's chatty and folksy narrative is comfortable, this doesn't mean the reader is in for an engrossing read which displays the important elements of a good mystery.

I kept reading because I was curious about John Walker's death, since there were so few clues as to who he was. But a steady deluge of homey details about Maxie's eating habits, clothing selections, beverage preferences, and shopping trips blunted my interest in the supposed mystery.

Then, almost as an afterthought, around page 186 of the 213-page novel, Sue Henry kicks it into high gear and focuses on the task at hand. Given the circumstances, Maxie is oddly quite calm about the body she discovers stashed in her attic, and then it becomes a sprint to wrap up the caper. For me, the whole somewhat surrealistic situation not only lacked plausibility but there was something very "rushed" about the closing pages.

I'd always thought mystery writers were supposed to play fair with the reader and sprinkle enough clues along the way to make the resolution of the case seem logical. Not only was this lacking for the most part with The End of the Road, but I also found myself shaking my head and muttering, "Come on now; this just doesn't work!" as I stumbled, along with Maxie, to this novel's shaky conclusion.

Admittedly I have been a fan of Sue Henry's earlier novels, but I'll be hard pressed to spend good money for future titles. This definitely marks the end of the road for me!