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In July of 1897, the S.S. Portland sailed from Skagway, Alaska, to Seattle, Washington, carrying two tons of Yukon gold - its arrival setting off the famed Klondike Gold Rush. Now, a hundred years later, amid great fanfare and publicity, another ship is re-creating the fabled voyage. A true Gold Rust buff, Alex Jensen is thrilled to be representing the Troopers on the Spirit of '98's historic journey down Alaska's spectacular Inside Passage - even though it means having to dress up in an uncomfortable period costume and keeping an eye on the ton of gold the ship carries below. But as long as his lady love, the famous "musher" Jessie Arnold, is at his side, this leisurely trip through a giant maze of scenic straits, sounds, harbors and inlets is as close a thing to heaven as the quiet, serious policeman can imagine. That is, until an unexplained rash of shipboard robberies - followed by the strange disappearance and probable death of a crewmember - pulls Alex rudely back to Earth. The only law officer in the vicinity, it is now Alex's duty to unravel the twisted skein of lies, greed and lethal secrets that entangles the crew and passengers on this historic cruise, before Death once again hails the Spirit somewhere along the Inside Passage.

292 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1997

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About the author

Sue Henry

36 books216 followers
Sue Henry is the author of 17 novels in two award-winning Alaska mystery series. Her first book, "Murder on the Iditarod Trail" (1991), was well reviewed and won both the Macavity Awards and Anthony Awards for best first novel, prompting the author to develop a series based on this book's characters, Alaskan state trooper Alex Jensen and Jessie Arnold, a sled dog racer.

In 2005, she started a new mystery series featuring a 63-year-old widow, Maxine McNab, travelling in her Winnebago with a miniature dachshund, Stretch. Maxine had appeared in Dead North (2001) in the first series.

Murder on the Iditarod Trail was filmed for television as The Cold Heart of a Killer (1996) starring Kate Jackson, who bought the rights to the book. Sue Henry lived in Alaska for more than a quarter of a century, and brought history, Alaskan lore, and the majestic beauty of the vast landscape to her mysteries. She also taught writing at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

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5 stars
311 (28%)
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415 (38%)
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273 (25%)
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63 (5%)
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11 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
Profile Image for Donna.
4,560 reviews169 followers
December 18, 2015
This is my second novel by this author, Sue Henry, and I'm completely enjoying this series of hers. They are Alaska based books and I love it. I love how these aren't a photo snapshot of the vast wilderness. There is an actual plot. The story and the characters are interesting. This one takes place on a boat headed for Seattle. I like how the author weaves in Alaskan history and folklore into her stories. However, she is heavy on pointless detail. While that is a major pet peeve of mine, it didn't bother me so much because I was enjoying everything else. I'm just not one to care about the color of things and other insignificant details. So 4 stars.

Profile Image for Lori.
1,164 reviews58 followers
October 6, 2019
Trooper Alex Jensen and dog musher Jessie Arnold set sail aboard the Spirit of '98 through the Inland Passage. The cruise commemorates the gold rush by taking a ton of gold to Seattle. When gold rush descendants discover thefts of sentimental items from their staterooms, the Captain enlists Alex's help to find the person responsible. Then a woman is missing and presumed dead, but another woman's body is recovered. Alex realizes something more sinister is afoot, and he doesn't know the number of conspirators involved or whom he should trust. Jessie's observations along with those of a teen she's mentoring in photography assist Alex tremendously. I enjoyed this installment. The characters were well-developed and interesting. I'd love to see some of them in future installments. I listened to the audio version read by Mary Peiffer who did a good job capturing various voices. I want to cruise the Inside Passage now!
Profile Image for Kimberly.
399 reviews51 followers
January 5, 2017
I love Sue Henry. She is one of my fav authors, Id like that known, foremost, to my fellow readers. "Death Takes Passage" is book four in the Jessie Arnold series.

In this adventure Jessie and Alex take an Alaskan cruise which explores the gold rush sagas of the area, as well as the wildlife in general and stories along the way of people in days gone by.
All is fun and fair until jewelry and other items come up missing from the cabins on the ship. Bodies start showing up. Cabin mates and crew start acting strange and thus the mystery is on, for Alex and Jessie.

The descriptions about the sea, the towns they visited, were so eloquently written. HOWEVER, I am really not sure what happened but I became so bored with the story and couldn't wait for it to end. Remember this is one of my fav authors....I did read the whole thing, I just found everything and everyone boring with the exception of those beautiful descriptions about the Alaskan wilderness. It was like a breath of fresh air until the story started taking off again, then here came my yawning..I was glad to close the book for good.
Profile Image for Loraine.
3,456 reviews
June 26, 2016
Rating: 4.5

History is repeating itself one hundred years later on Alaska's breathtaking Inside Passage. Re-creating the famous Voyage of 1897, the Spirit of '98 is setting sail from Skagway, Alaska, en route to Seattle, Washington, carrying two tons of Yukon gold. Alaska State Trooper Alex Jensen and his love, famous female "musher" Jessie Arnold, are among the excited participants. The Grim Reaper is a passenger as well.

This is the second Sue Henry Alaska Mystery I have read, and I enjoyed it as much as the first. This is Book 4 in the series. It can be read as a stand alone as there are only a couple of short references to previous books. Sue Henry is a master at bringing Alaskan scenery and wildlife alive enough for the reader to feel like they are right there. Having sailed the Alaskan coast several years ago, I loved her vivid descriptions. It is obvious that Henry did a lot of research both on Alaska scenery, wildlife, and the Gold Rush era.

The cast of characters was wonderful containing many unique personalities who were sailing on this recreation voyage of the 1897 Gold sailing. Alex and Jessie of course are both great sleuthing personalities. I loved Lou, Rozie, and Dallas in paricular, and the characters who played the parts in the melodrama mystery were hilarious. The plot had so many twists and turns that it made for a riveting read. I have to admit I never did figure out who the big boss was until the very end of the book, and I loved the final surprise twist that even Alex and Jessie didn't figure out.

The only reason I did not give this book a 5 is there are a few swear words used. They were used by the villains, but I didn't feel they were really necessary to Henry's already great suspense novel. Also, I wondered about unlocked doors in 1997. But it did work as a critical part of the plot. I look forward to reading the rest of this very good mystery series.

FAVORITE QUOTES: "You've got a lot on your plate, Dallas.... Well life's like that sometimes. Nobody promised tea and crumpets, did they now?"

"That was not a good deed, Alex. There are just things as you go along in life that need doing."

"There were, he was learning again, incredible unexpected prices to be paid for caring, and a sense of awesome helplessness was one of them."
Profile Image for Nancy H.
3,131 reviews
January 27, 2022
This is a really good mystery set in Alaska, on a ship that is taking tons of gold down the Inside Passage, recreating the famous voyage in 1897 that started the Yukon Gold Rush. The story is extremely well-researched and well-written and includes some real events and real people. It is a page-turner that will delight both mystery fans and Alaska afficionados.
Profile Image for Linda.
2,328 reviews59 followers
July 10, 2012
I really enjoyed this book. The story was a lot of fun, with some good twists and turns. I loved that they were in some of the places I got to visit when I went to Alaska, I think that added to my enjoyment. There were a couple of spots with some major plot errors that had me looking at the page before going I swore I just read the opposite (and I did), these were not enough to take away from the overall story, just minor inconviences.
Profile Image for Jasmine Giacomo.
Author 18 books26 followers
March 3, 2011
Alex and Jessie take passage on a small cruise ship that’s re-enacting the voyage of the SS Portland, whose arrival in Seattle WA with two tons of Yukon gold sparked the Klondike gold rush. Alex’s role is purely ceremonial, until crimes begin to occur, leading him to step back into his job and take on thieves and murderers alike.

I’ve been to Alaska only once, but I loved it. I picked this book up because I wanted to experience its vistas once more, and the premise of the novel—a cruise through the Inside Passage—seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I was not disappointed. The scenery description was awesome; I felt like I was there.

I was interested to read in the massive acknowledgments section at the back of the book that this voyage was actually scheduled to happen. The author got wind of it a couple of years before it was to occur and was inspired to write a fictional account of the re-enactment. That sounds both awesome and loyal to Alaska, and for that I applaud her. But I’m not sure the book was the better for her trying to serve two masters. She included several real-life individuals, and the cruise ship itself, getting permission for each, and having to adapt her plot to individual/company wishes. Between that and the information dumps (see below), the book came across as part-future-fictional-documentary. If that long acknowledgments section had been at the front, it would have helped me understand why the story sometimes took tortured side trips.

Alex and Jessie were really good characters. They were comfortable with each other and their own roles as well. Well, Alex was; there were no dogs for Jessie to mush here, so she just got to play sleuth/babysitter.

The other characters ranged from really quite awesome to “why is this person even in this book?” Some of the red herrings the book presented in the form of suspicious characters were never even explained, leaving me dissatisfied.

Young Lou, apathetic teenager extraordinaire, was apparently so adorable that Jessie wanted to adopt her on sight. Crotchety old Dallas, while eventually growing on me, struck Jessie as a muse of wisdom and affection immediately. The insertion of these characters into Jessie’s and Alex’s lives so that they could later help out with the action was so clumsy that it dragged me out of the story with a mocking snort. In both cases, Jessie states “I like you, a lot,” practically upon being introduced. The book also had a habit of taking a jaunt into the future for a couple of paragraphs and explaining how things went afterward, for sometimes weeks in the future, before jerking me back into the present time. Just because I know that, in the future, Jessie and Lou really get to like each other and hang out, does not mean that I’ll sit back and accept that as a reason for them to bond immediately. Jessie is awesome, but she is not psychic.

In fact, I got to the point of frowning every time “a lot” came up, because of Jessie’s immediate adoration for these two characters. It showed up…a lot.

The character Judy Raymond just seemed to wander through the plot, serving no purpose. Another downside of having this book contain real people is that I find myself questioning all the book’s flaws and wondering whether they’re present because of the two-masters thing again. Sigh. Judy shows up at the beginning and pops in now and again during the whole book, never seeming to have a goal of her own, never seeming to find a resolution. I’m not sure she deserved the end she got, but at least something was finally certain about her.

The bad guys had their own scenes in this novel. I didn’t mind it for most of the book, until the last scene they had all to themselves. In that scene, they blatantly give away the plan they’ve been carefully keeping from us all throughout the book. The next scene they’re in is when they’re beginning to execute that plan. Why couldn’t we just keep that mystery (or at least the illusion of it—it wasn’t that difficult to ascertain) going just a little further? Honestly! If you’re going to keep it a secret for so long, do so all the way to the action-packed reveal. On the other hand, the bad guys didn’t do much more than give us the opportunity to see their bumbling, argumentative selves and some more nice scenery. The book could have done without their scenes entirely.

I loved this plot. The captive audience is one of my favorite types of mystery. The scenery and building suspense were highly enjoyable. The bad guys had a good plan. The good guys had a better one. And there was much sneaking about and kicking ass. It was great. Most enjoyably, the ending resulted in actual arrests. Be still my heart.

There was one plot hole that bothered me, especially when it ended up being critical to the final action. One of the mysterious characters Alex and Jessie had already met had a friend she hung out with. The heroes wondered if he was up to anything. But they never so much as spoke to him, even after voicing an intent to do so. Eventually, Alex requests a background check on the guy while Alex is off the ship in Ketchikan, despite the man’s continued presence aboard ship and lack of attempting to hide in any way. But before it comes in,

I was inordinately pleased to find that the book wasn’t written in first person. I got to follow Alex around most of the time, but sometimes I also got to follow Jessie. They both made for equally entertaining main characters.

In most cases, the novel flowed effortlessly, especially in the scenery description. I could feel a deep love of the land and the sea in those words. But every now and again, the book would pause, and an info dump would back up, beeping, and bury me in facts which were described in present tense. It was as if the author copied and pasted from an encyclopedia. Most of these sections were, thankfully, given over to the cruise coordinator as she spoke over the public address section, so there was a reason for the info dump. But some of them were separate from that character. I ended up skipping most of them anyway, because they just droned on for paragraphs. I’m usually one who reads every word in a book. But these paragraphs had nothing to do with the plot, so I made an exception.

The author apparently loves italics, though not for internal dialogue, which remain unmarked in this novel. All the cruise coordinator’s info dumps were delivered in italics. All the lines in the re-enactment mystery plays were also given in italics. I couldn’t see a connection, nor really a reason, but there it was. Odd.

Still, I really enjoyed the main characters and their world. I think I might be safe with a nice toffee—er, another Sue Henry book sometime soon.
Profile Image for Pamela Mclaren.
1,696 reviews116 followers
June 17, 2018
Jessie Arnold and Alaskan State Trooper Alex Jensen are among the nearly 100 passengers on the trip of a lifetime — a boat cruise the recreates the famous Voyage of 1897 from Skagway, Alaska, to Seattle, Washington. It should be fun and relaxing as they dress in period costume to be a part of the festivities, but for these two, it quickly becomes more complicated and serious when certain personal items and a staff member disappear.

Can they find out the how and why before the voyage ends? Its a race to the finish in Death Takes Passage.

Sue Henry writes very interesting books with a lot of the history of Alaska thrown in. This is a good read and a fun lesson on this important part of U.S. history - the Klondike gold rush.
Profile Image for Molly.
737 reviews
January 9, 2022
I really liked the setting in this installment and the gold rush history.
I'm marking this irritating inconsistency as a spoiler in case someone hasn't read the 3rd book in the series:
42 reviews
June 17, 2017
While I loved the author's description of Alaskan nature and wildlife I was put off by the offensive language of some of the characters. It was such a stark contrast and detracted from the interesting plot that I didn't finish the book. I have read another book in the series and was bothered by the same thing.
Profile Image for Karen Parker.
266 reviews1 follower
January 23, 2018
I really enjoyed this historically accurate and engaging story. What an entertaining way to learn history! I love to listen to stories of Alaska, where I have lived for 25+ years, and the main characters are all quite interesting. I haven't heard the earlier 3 books in this series yet, but I hope to locate all the Sue Henry Alaska books in audio format.
Profile Image for Susan.
1,614 reviews
April 12, 2023
This little old paperback mystery caught my eye because I’d read another Arnold/Jensen book several years ago about the Iditarod. I knew I’d probably learn some more interesting facts about the one state I’ve yet to visit. I did—this time about the 1897 gold rush as well as cruising the Inside Passage from Skagway, AK, to Seattle, WA.
Profile Image for Bryan.
697 reviews14 followers
September 22, 2017
This is a wonderful book, with the added touch of a narrative of the scenery, and its history along the inside passage. This book is a murder-mystery aboard The Spirit of '98, a small cruise ship, commemorating the Gold Rush of 1898, sailing through the Inside Passage.
Profile Image for Jan Phillips.
179 reviews
September 29, 2019
I purchased this book from a bookstore in Ketchikan AK while on a cruise through Alaska’s Inner Passage. I enjoyed reading this story of the re-enactment of the voyage to bring Alaska’s Gold Rush gold to Seattle and the plot of trying to steal that gold.
271 reviews
January 2, 2021
Passage

I liked this. I couldn't believe all the help Alex had, and I didn't suspect Carla. I was more inclined towards the Reynolds woman. I liked Dallas and her niece. I would recommend this book to anyone.
16 reviews
January 29, 2022
Mystery on the high seas

Who would think that such an occurrence could happen these days with all the high tech. But aboard this 1998 vessel you do things the old fashioned way as Jessie and Alex prove.
Profile Image for Robin.
100 reviews
December 23, 2023
I am really enjoying this series. This one was especially interesting and kept me guessing. Inspires me to want to take an Alaskan cruise on a small ship with this route. The scenery sounded magnificent!
Profile Image for Julianne O'Brien.
285 reviews1 follower
August 12, 2025
I bought this while on a recent Alaska adventure and didn't realize it was #4 of a series. fortunately it read ok as a stand alone. while I enjoyed it, more for the ties to said Alaska trip, I'm nor sure that I'm going to go back to read the others.
4 reviews
January 5, 2017
Love the setting

Sue Henry always creates an interesting story in an interesting setting. Her lead characters are likable. A good way to spend a rainy afternoon.
Profile Image for Spuddie.
1,553 reviews92 followers
April 10, 2018
Was glad to see the series back on track with this book--I was a little discouraged after the last one.
Profile Image for Tomi.
1,519 reviews7 followers
July 19, 2018
Another enjoyable read, a mystery that keeps you guessing. Great details about the Gold Rush. I am enjoying Sue Henry's work.
Profile Image for Mara.
Author 8 books275 followers
Read
June 30, 2019
I liked it-- and recommend the book to take along on an Alaskan cruise-- but there were times when the details dragged down the pace.
107 reviews1 follower
February 3, 2020
Not one of her best. Had a hard time finishing it.
374 reviews
May 23, 2020
Loved it

This story kept my attention. A vacation of sorts on a small cruise ship that follows the course of a good rush route turns into work and danger.
Profile Image for Carolynn.
388 reviews2 followers
July 19, 2020
Sue Henry writes a great mystery story while also describing Alaska’s terrain in a way that makes one want to go see it!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews

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