Race for the Dying by Steven F. Havill

A mystery book review

Race for the Dying is set in 1891 as Dr. Thomas Parks, freshly graduated from medical school, arrives in a tiny logging community on the Washington coast to join the medical practice of his father's old friend, Dr. John Haines. "What he could see was brown and gray, dismally wet, wretchedly muddy, and ramshackle .... In one sheltered cove, the water itself was brown and corduroy with an enormous floating island of logs that covered a dozen acres."

Hazards of all kinds abound in tiny Port McKinney, from the routine dangers of the sawmill to the terrain itself. Parks has barely stepped off the boat when, rushing to answer an urgent call for help, he tumbles off a cliff with his borrowed mule.

"Doctors make the worst patients," Haines tells him. Parks proves him correct. Before he is properly healed, Parks also proves himself indispensable as a doctor. His integrity and passion for medicine drive such a compelling story that readers may find themselves wondering why Race for the Dying is billed as a murder mystery. Parks's passion is for healing, not investigating, and though bodies drop at regular intervals, most of the deaths have less-than-mysterious causes.

The real mystery arises out of oddities like the munificent salary offered to Parks, an expansive clinic described in Haines's forthcoming medical tome but nowhere to be seen in primitive Port McKinney, and the verbally deft Dr. Riggs whose vital work seems not to involve the actual treatment of patients. If it’s also a bit odd that Haines, seemingly a fine physician, becomes so involved with the questionable Dr. Riggs, most readers will be satisfied with the vivid and evocative writing in Race for the Dying. It's a ripping good tale of the sort that keeps readers inconveniently awake past the midnight hour. (2009, 322 pages)