Mt. Katahdin provides scenic backdrop for murder mystery

MURDER ON HIGH, by Stefanie Matteson, Berkley Publishing Group, 244 pages, $18.95.

“Murder on High,” the sixth Charlotte Graham murder mystery, should be a delight for Mainers to read. Its scene — the “high” in the title — is Mount Katahdin. And the murderer and victim are both “from away,” but the action takes place in Maine.

Charlotte Graham, an Oscar-winning actress with a penchant for detecting, is at least a first cousin to Jessica Fletcher, the Maine author celebrated in the TV series, “Murder She Wrote.” And surely she can trace her ancestry back to Miss Marple as well.

Charlotte, certainly a mature lady, tells an intriguing story as she assists her friend, Detective Lt. Howard Tracey of the Maine State Police, in the investigation of a murder on Mount Kathadin.

Stefanie Matteson has woven a twisting plot with vivid descriptions of Maine and its people. The victim, Iris Richards, turns out to be a one-time screenwriter for Miss Graham. Iris O’Connor, as she was known then, was apparently blacklisted in the days of communist witch hunts by the House Un-American Activities Committee. She had retired to Maine and become a “plant lady” and a leader of Thoreau Society activities. She takes a hike to the top of the mountain, doesn’t return and eventually is found — murdered.

As the investigation unfolds, the author treats us to some intriguing side issues — a mysterious Chief Pamola, supposed to be the incarnation of a vengeful Penobscot god. This Pamola periodically terrorizes campers in Baxter State Park, the mountain’s locale. Did he commit murder too?

Then there are the intriguing characters that populate these Charlotte Graham novels. There is Iris’ companion, Jeanne Ouellette, a tall, sallow lady who stands to gain by Iris’ death; Keith Samusit, a modern Penobscot Indian who leads “vision quests” in a center adjacent to Baxter, and who stands to gain much from the death; the homeless Mack Scott, also a follower of Thoreau. And, of course, there is Charlotte herself, a veteran of Hollywood now enjoying a brush with TV celebrity. She has a summer place in Bridge Harbor on the Maine coast. And her detective friend is endowed with a gentility and sense of humor that is equally engaging.

But action, scenery, and character aren’t all that the reader finds in this charming novel. Salted away on its pages are delightful gems of description. For example, Charlotte describes herself as “an over-the-hill movie star with a weakness for Manhattans and marzipan.” The mountain comes in for much description, such as “An isolated gray granite monolith, it rose abruptly from the surrounding wilderness to a height of a mile. There were no competing peaks or foothills to detract from its solitary dignity, no trees growing on its rocky summit to dim its shining splendor. It was there, seeming to embody all of man’s noblest virtues: serenity, strength, aspiration.”

And, in describing Charlotte’s hike up the mountain, the author drops in a neat touch with a quote about acting from Sir Laurence Olivier: “Remember your feet.” And she does so with a charming twist: “Keeping you feet on the ground was the secret to good acting, and it applied to mountain climbing as well. And in acting, the trick was not to think about how far you had to go, or, for that matter, how far you had come.’

We also learn about vision quests: “Expressive of a basic human need to reconnect with the wilderness, and through that connection to explore the wilderness that lies within our souls.”

And, of course, there are the quotations from Thoreau, as in a dialogue between Charlotte and Mack, where one says, “I had three chairs in my house…” and the other completes the quotation, “One for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.”

Description and scenery, no matter how vibrant, are but welcome additions in this novel. It is a mystery and a good one. It has action and plenty of threads to follow as Charlotte and Tracey attempt to find out who committed the mysterious, seemingly clueless murder. They do and the reader is rewarded in the process.

Bill Roach is a free-lance writer from Florida.