Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
Wrap up warm! The cold and ice-bound environment which underpins this Skandi-thriller is so all-pervading, that the temperature will drop as you read it! The weather and visibility is so bad that it actually contributes to the tension, narrative and structure of the novel.
Erik Amdahl is a troubled man, beset with recurring nightmares after the death of his older daughter in a climbing wall accident. With what is left of his family, he follows his eco-activist wife to Norway's arctic circle, where she is to campaign against plans to re-open a copper mine in the pristine wilderness where it will disrupt the centuries-old way of life of the Sami reindeer herders.
He undertakes to take his remaining daughter, 13 year-old Sofia, on a days-long trek on skis across this wilderness, in an attempt to bond with her, and exorcise the guilt he feels over her sister’s death. On day-one, she cuts herself on a Sami knife given to her as a birthday present by the main Sami anti-mining campaigners. As the pair are within skiing distance of the campaigners’ remote cabin, they repair there for first aid.
Witnessing the murder of the husband and wife, in their own home by what appear a team of operatives of the mining company, Erik and Sofia flee but are pursued. Skiing for their lives, Erik battles the team sent after them, all the while, fighting exhaustion, hunger and frostbite and finding the real reason the ‘Mining company’ wants to control the area.
If Erik and Sofia are to survive they must put themselves and those who help them at risk whilst being watched over by ancient Norse spirits straight out of Erik’s nightmares.
This is a book which drags you in to its lethal environment. It is rooted in the past with nods to the current pandemic and to the cold war, which in this frozen and snowbound terrain, is anything but cold. It is the story of a broken man, taken to extremes, broken further, and forced to kill, but determined to go beyond what he believes himself capable of, to protect his daughter.
You will never complain about a British winter again!
Interestingly the author, who is half Norwegian had to pull out of just such a trek after overestimating his abilities, so he knows of which he speaks. The novel is also part inspired by the hellish journey of the sole-surviving (of 12) Norwegian SOE agent who was sent to destroy a German aircraft facility in WWII.
