Highway to Hell »

Rosemary Clement-Moore lives and writes in Arlington, Texas. You can visit her at www.readrosemary.com.

From the Hardcover edition.

Maggie Quinn was expecting to find plenty of trouble with Lisa over Spring Break. Give a girl a bikini, a beachfront hotel, and an absent boyfriend, and it’s as good as a road map to the dark side. But Maggie doesn’t have to go looking for trouble. Trouble has started looking for her. One dead cow and a punctured gas tank later, she and Lisa are stuck in Dulcina, Texas—a town so small that it has an owner. And lately life in this small town hasn’t been all that peaceful. An eerie predator is stalking the ranchland.

Everyone in town has a theory, but not even Maggie’s psychic mojo can provide any answers. And the longer the girls are stranded, the more obvious it becomes that something is seriously wrong. Only no one—not even Maggie’s closest ally—wants to admit that they could have been forced on a detour down the highway to hell.

Children's Literature

This novel is the third in a series apparently subtitled "Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil." Maggie and her best friend Lisa seem to find demons to conquer everywhere. It's good that they have discovered that pure ocean salt will defeat a demon every time and that they tend to land in places (such as the middle of Texas on their way to spring break) where such salt is readily available. Maggie and Lisa are driving through Texas on their way to South Padre Island. Maggie is on a research assignment as she is also an intrepid girl reporter for her college newspaper, and Lisa has come along for the ride. Naturally, Maggie's ever-reliable Jeep breaks down in a remote town owned by a single family where cattle are mysteriously being killed by some animal that is not a wolf or a dog, but bigger and apparently self-regenerating. The girls take a room in the town's only motel, encountering handsome young cowboys, gossipy town mavens, and a strange Senora with psychic powers who never leaves the ranch. Ultimately, Maggie and Lisa must call upon Maggie's boyfriend (also a demon fighter as well as a demon researcher), the grandson of the mysterious Senora, and a would-be priest to fight off evil. This may be good escape literature for girls twelve to fourteen, but it can be scary, too. Good always ultimately wins over evil and it seems God is on Maggie and Lisa's side, but the source of demons and the theology thereof is a tossed salad of European and South American folklore, voodoo, demonology, and, apparently, Catholicism. The writing is witty, the plot engaging, and the philosophical underpinnings murky enough that it can be read as just another adventure for two high-spirited girls on the road.Reviewer: Myrna Dee Marler