Before winter in the small Greenland village of Inussuk, the gravediggers dig seven graves and hope that will be enough. One is about to be filled when a man throws a young woman overboard a boat and then runs over her.
Constable David Maratse is nearly ready to be released from the hospital, where he has been recuperating from torture. He has been given early retirement because of his injuries and plans to retire in Inussuk. Once there, though, he and his friend Karl pull up the body of a young woman while fishing.
It’s pretty obvious who she is. First Minister Nivi Winthur’s daughter Tinka has gone missing. It soon seems clear that the murder was political. Although Nivi’s opponent in the coming election, Malik Uutaaq, is running on a platform of Greenland for Greenlanders, not Danes, he prefers his sex partners to be half Danish and very young. Tinka was the most recent. But would Malik actually murder her?
When Nivi meets Maratse, she asks him to help find her daughter’s killer.
Although after two revealing conversations, I didn’t find it hard to guess the murderer, I liked this novel for other reasons, mostly its exotic setting and descriptions of life in Greenland. (How many mysteries have sled dogs in them?) It is described as Arctic Noir on the cover, but except for the crime and the suspenseful ending, it was more of a cozy mystery.
I have read a couple of other books taking place in Greenland and it is a fascinating surrounding for a thriller. This sounds thrilling.
This is the first book in this series, but apparently he has written several series.
It was the setting that I most enjoyed in this too, and I liked the insight into how politics works in the country. They call almost every crime novel noir these days – it’s annoying!
I agree! There’s something to be said, a lot to be said, for the ones that aren’t noir!