[1][2][3] According to her obituary in the Anchorage Daily News, she was born Mathilda Sue Hall in Salmon, Idaho, and married Paul K. Henry in 1965; they had two boys, Bruce and Eric.
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.
[4] 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.
[5][6] All maps for her books starting with Dead North (2001) were made by her son, Eric Henry.