Half Inuit Edie Kiglatuk is a part-time teacher at the local school and also guides hunters out into the Canadian Arctic that she knows so well. She's working hard to help her stepson Joe Inukpuk pay for his nurse's training. When one of the hunters she's guiding is shot and killed, her carefully balanced life begins to teeter. The Council wants to call it an accident, but Edie and police sergeant Derek Palliser are suspicious. Then the other hunter goes out into the tundra again and disappears. Regardless what the Council says, Edie is determined to find out what's really going on.
White Heat is one of the best evocations of place that I have read in a long, long time. I'm fortunate that I decided to read the book in the summer; otherwise, I might have gotten frostbite. McGrath paints a fascinating portrait of the Inuit people high up in the Canadian Arctic: what the typical village is like, the typical home, transportation, medicine, education, Inuit customs and history, and more. All this information blends seamlessly into the story. Some of the information is disturbing, some of it makes good appetite suppressants (I'll never visit the area to sample its cuisine), and all of it is fascinating.
Add in an intriguing mystery that has everything to do with the landscape, a remote chapter of its history, and bad guys whose motives are unclear, and you've got two-thirds of an excellent mystery.
The final third is the cast, and McGrath has created two very memorable characters in Sergeant Derek Palliser and Edie Kiglatuk. Palliser falls in love with the wrong women and spends a lot of time studying lemmings instead of doing police work, but that doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with how well he does his paying job. This man has depth.
What Edie Kiglatuk has goes way beyond mere depth. This woman is an ex-polar bear hunter-- one of the best in the entire area before she began drinking too much. To be a polar bear hunter, you have to be smart, you have to be able to think and react quickly, you have to know your terrain, and you have to be brave. Edie is all of these. She's also an excellent teacher, and I loved the scenes showing how she manages to teach her class of Inuit children how to survive in their own world as well as the world of the white man. If Edie has a flaw, it's her emotional entanglements, and those can and do lead her astray.
After reading the digital short story "Edie Kiglatuk's Christmas," I had the feeling that I would really enjoy the series, so I'm very glad I bought the first two books. When I'm ready to risk fictional frostbite once again, I have the second book, The Boy in the Snow, waiting for me.
White Heat by M.J. McGrath
ISBN: 9780670022489
Viking © 2011
Hardcover, 400 pages
Amateur Sleuth, #1 Edie Kiglatuk mystery
Rating: A
Source: Purchased from Book Outlet
Wow! You are really moving along at a quick pace with the books. Must be something in that pool!
ReplyDeleteI liked this book a lot, especially learning more about the Inuit culture. I detoured and read about the settling of Ellesmere Island. It's very disturbing, as it was a coerced settlement for people who had nothing at all. M.J. McGrath wrote a nonfiction book about this, "The Long Exile."
The Boy in the Snow doesn't take place there, but there is a third book coming out which goes back to Ellesmere Island. A friend who adores Canada and all things Canadian is waiting to buy the third book, so I'll borrow it.
I need to read about cold weather in this city heat and humidity, which has kept me a/c bound.
I usually save books that are set in Siberia, Alaska, Scandinavia, etc. for summer. Cold weather and I do not get along!
DeleteCathy - I thought this was an excellent novel, and not just because of Edie's character (although I think that's very well-drawn). It's got such a sense of place and culture I think. That aspect of the novel is what drew me in and kept me there, if I can put it that way.
ReplyDeleteYou certainly can because I found that part of the novel to be fascinating-- even though I don't think I could eat the food!
DeleteDefinitely could not eat the food, especially the soup! I could barely read about it.
ReplyDeletePretty good appetite suppressants for anyone not raised on that diet... or for anyone who may be starving to death!
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