Alaskans Die Young

It seemed a fine project for a woman with an incurable itch to write: research the background of a couple of victims of accidents and one suicide, create a fictional set of connections among them, generate a homicidal villain, and thus produce a book. And so Heather Adams set out to write her mystery novel, but somehow the world wouldn't cooperate. There was her irrepressible grandson Andrew, always capable of providing distraction. There was her dutiful son Rowe, always ready to help even if she wanted none; there were her own cantankerous parents, demanding help from her even though they lived a continent's width away. There were visiting college chums; there was the fifty-below weather of a Fairbanks winter. Everything seemed to conspire against Heather's completing her book project-including the circle of writing friends who had inspired her to tackle it in the first place. Slowly, Heather began to fear that her fiction was becoming far too real for comfort-or for safety. If an actual murderer did lurk out there, the would-be author was right on track for becoming the next victim.