It’s been 16 years since I reviewed the late L.R. Wright’s first mystery, The Suspect, and it is with considerable sadness that I now review Menace, her posthumous final work. Much has changed over the years – Wright replaced grizzled veteran RCMP detective Karl Alberg with Sergeant Edwina Henderson, and the villains have varied from the gentle senior citizen George Wilcox to the most recent and well-hidden stalker of Menace. Throughout all her novels, Wright’s prose has remained unfailingly spare and elegant.

This second Eddie Henderson mystery finds the recently promoted Henderson adjusting to her new command posting in the B.C. Sunshine Coast town of Gibsons when two local women report unusual but seemingly unrelated occurrences. A young social worker reports a break-in where nothing is stolen, while an older woman experiences a string of strange events and a close shave with a speeding car. As Henderson tries to settle comfortably into her new professional and personal lives, she and her officers begin to suspect that a stalker may be on the loose.

The action swings effortlessly from life in the towns and back roads of the local coastal communities to the artificial anonymity of computer chat rooms and the local RCMP offices. This is not the best of Wright’s novels – the plot is somewhat slight and the unusually large cast of characters is not defined with her usual clarity – but it is a remarkably rounded and readable tale, especially considering that it was finished in the final months of her battle with breast cancer. She will be greatly missed.