A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

The Boy In The Snow is M.J. McGrath's follow up to White Heat and the second in the Edie Kiglatuk mystery series.  This book took me a little longer to read.  It sucks you in, but it's not really a 'fast read.'  As with her debut novel, McGrath winds some heavy, complicated themes into this mystery that deal with land development, human trafficking, the sex trade and selling babies (and yes, you did read that last one right). While in Alaska to support her ex-husband's Iditarod run, Edie stumbles upon the frozen body of an infant boy wrapped up in a silken shroud and hidden in a tiny 'spirit house' under a tree on the edge of Old Believer land.  An interview with the Anchorage Police Department detective in charge of the case makes Edie realizes that the detective has prematurely pegged a couple of Old Believers as the murderers. So Edie decides to do some digging on her own when the forensic evidence she witnessed at the scene doesn't add up to wh...

M.J. McGrath is a British author who has written several non-fiction books about the Arctic and its native cultures; McGrath makes her fiction debut with White Heat , a story set in the isolated, Inuit Canadian tundra with a half Inuit protagonist.  All murder mysteries convey a sense of urgency especially when more people start dropping dead; in the instance of White Heat , the remote, cold, and inherently dangerous environment of the arctic adds to the sense of urgency and danger--if the murderer doesn't get to you, the frigid weather will if one's not careful. Edie is the best guide on Ellesmere Island, but when she takes two American men out on the tundra for a routine hunting trip and one is shot and killed, a puzzling and dangerous mystery is uncovered --and promptly dismissed by her community's mayor.  More bodies fall in the wake of the first murder as the dead man's travel companion disappears on a later expedition guided by her beloved stepson, Joe, who also...